


Good Boy

by fancypineapple



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Domestic, Kimi Wa Petto AU, M/M, Office AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-01
Updated: 2015-12-01
Packaged: 2018-05-04 07:58:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5326616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fancypineapple/pseuds/fancypineapple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Office worker Do Kyungsoo has just been dumped by his latest boyfriend when he finds a mysterious homeless man in a box at his front door. Being the kind soul he is, he offers this man a deal he can't refuse. Inspired by the manga Kimi wa Petto, by Yayoi Ogawa.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Good Boy

**Author's Note:**

> Comission for Melissa! I took so long to post this... this was actually finished a couple of months ago, but i had internet troubles and never posted the original draft, which got deleted, lel. Watch out for the lowkey italic abuse.

It had been a good day.

Really. Truly.

Work had been fine. Coffee tasted fresh, no one in the office smelled weird, and Kyungsoo had just done some online shopping for a thing he had been wanting for a while. So, it was a good day. Maybe if he had never craved for a snack, it would’ve remained so. If he had never gone to the common area to wrestle the vending machine for some chips, _that_ wouldn't have happened.

Though, now that Kyungsoo thought carefully about it, it’d only be postponing the inevitable.

“Let’s break up.”

 

 

 

So now Kyungsoo’s lips taste salty, even though it has been several hours. It clings to him like a physical symbolization of the scene that doesn’t stop looping in his head, from the moment he opened the bag of chips to how the man’s back looked when he walked away from the room.

“Seems like his boyfriend broke up with him.”

“Again?!”

Kyungsoo’s left brow twitches.

“What do you mean by _again_?”

“No, I mean… another one? Kyungsoo oppa goes through boyfriends really quick, huh.”

“Right? I wonder why they don’t stick with him. He’s good-looking, works well. I heard he’s really rich, too.”

Somehow, Kyungsoo doesn’t find it in him to be proud or flattered by any of that. He’s just annoyed. And hungry. And tired of wearing that bloody necktie. Fuck office jobs.

“I heard that all his boyfriends say the same thing when they break up with him: ‘I don’t feel any love coming from you’.”

“Aah, I understand. Kyungsoo oppa is very work-oriented, right? I guess his boyfriends feel lonely…”

“Men need a lot of affection…”

“It can’t be helped then…”

When the train finally, fucking _finally_ reaches his station, Kyungsoo makes a point to walk right past his chattering workmates as he climbs off the train, shooting them a glare for good measure. They shrivel immediately. Kyungsoo hopes they won’t have the guts to look at him at work for a long, long time.

The station is packed, smelling of sweat, full of rogue elbows shoving Kyungsoo around and a general dampness in the air, coming from the relentless rainy weather they’ve been having these days. With certain difficulty, Kyungsoo makes his way through the crowd, reaching the escalators with much effort, and it’s only when he’s standing on his step of the escalator that he realizes how truly exhausted he is.

His boyfriend broke up with him.

 _Again_.

Saying the same thing.

 _Again_.

What’s _that_ about? What’s wrong with how Kyungsoo treats them? Despite putting up a tough-as-nails image to his friends and coworkers, he thinks of himself as quite a gentle person. He cooks for them, remembers all the dates. For this last boyfriend of his, the one who just broke up with him, he missed work one day to buy him a birthday present. He _never_ misses work. But he missed it just to find nice things for that—that _fucking prick_.

Kyungsoo wants to kick things into the distance.

He strongly holds back that urge as he walks in the streets, lest he look like he’s throwing a temper tantrum. He breathes deeply, clenches his jaw, and hangs in there. No kicking. He’s an adult, he’ll be fine.

That’s it, until he gets home and finds a huge cardboard box lying in front of his door. Across his door, to be more exact. It’s quite obvious that that can’t be any of his constantly arriving packages (Kyungsoo has an online shopping problem), because he hasn’t bought anything this big since he acquired his refrigerator five years ago. Besides, this box is open, he can see that it’s open from its ragged flaps hanging from its sides.

So, someone just didn’t care and left this huge piece of garbage blocking Kyungsoo’s entryway.

So, he snaps.

He stomps over to his front gate and, unleashing all of his fury, kicks the cardboard box with all his might.

The box screams.

Kyungsoo doesn’t scream back merely by chance. The scream gets stuck in his throat. Instead, he just jumps back in startle, widening his eyes in confusion at the box. Does he dare to look? It might not be safe…

Before he gets even halfway to reaching a decision, a figure rises from the now slightly dented box, spreading in the air a powerful stench of old sweat and general pollution. Kyungsoo gags. The figure happens to be a person, a skeleton-thin, sad-looking person who casts upon Kyungsoo a very pitiful glance.

“Why did you kick me?”

Kyungsoo blinks at the deep voice, and at the sulky, offended question that has been directed at him. He then raises his eyes to his house – to make sure that it is, indeed, his house and not anyone else’s – and, upon confirming that fact, lowers them back to the dirty human in the box.

“This is my house,” he informs, pointing at the construction. “You’re blocking my front door.”

The human blinks. Their _eyelids_ are filthy. It’s quite obvious that they need help. If that wasn’t obvious from the fact they’re hiding in a cardboard box instead of being at home having dinner, it is now.

“Right…” they mumble, retracting back into the box. “I’m sorry.” And, from inside, they start rocking the cardboard structure back and forth, thus moving it, half an inch by half an inch, out of Kyungsoo’s way.

There goes the last of Kyungsoo’s patience with them.

The sound of cardboard ripping under his hands is surprisingly loud. With one tug, he unveils the human, coiled like a cat inside, completely flabbergasted.

“HEY!!” they scream, scrambling to try to stop Kyungsoo from causing more destruction, but it is a futile effort. With five swift hand motions, the cardboard box is no more. “MY HOUSE! Why did you do this?!”

“Your _house_?” Kyungsoo frowns. This person needs help more urgently than he initially thought. They’re trying to pick the pieces of their ‘house’ with their elbows. Not with, you know. Their hands. “Jesus, what are you doing…”

“I ask you! What were you thinking? Where am I gonna sleep now?” The person whines, insisting on their elbow misuse, and Kyungsoo, not bearing to watch that scene for a second longer, kneels down to pick the pieces with his own hands. The cardboard itself has a stench, too. This is disgusting. “Like, good for you that you have a fancy home and all, but this is all I have, you know!”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t think you actually—lived in this…?” Kyungsoo is midway his apathetic retort when, with a casual glance towards the human’s general direction, he notices something. “Your hands,” he points out, frowning at said hands. “What happened to them?”

They are covered in ragged, filthy bandages, wrapped so haphazardly around their palms and in layers so thick that they steal the hands’ shape, making the fingers look a bit dislodged. Or, they could actually be dislodged. It’s impossible to tell.

The person looks down to their hands, as if seeing nothing wrong with them. “They’re hurt,” they answer, and Kyungsoo almost laughs.

“That I can tell,” he replies sardonically, pulling the person’s arm so he can analyze their hands better. It’s… uglier from up close, that’s for sure. Those bandages are rigid with muck, and, among the many colors that stain it, Kyungsoo detects several streaks of dry blood and a whole lot of pus. Jesus Christ.

“I’m taking you to the hospital,” Kyungsoo kindly informs them, getting to his feet in all but a second and tugging them up by the arm so they’ll follow. They do, and, unfortunately, they are tall. Very tall. “Grab your things.”

The person is clearly bewildered at Kyungsoo’s sudden instructions. They do not move. “I don’t have anything,” is what they confess, at last, after an impatient glare from Kyungsoo. “All I had was—”

“Whatever,” Kyungsoo cuts them off. “Easier for me.” And, still with a hand firmly wrapped around the person’s grimy arm, he marches on towards the hospital, pulling them along him like a dog on a leash.

 

 

 

In the two hours they spend at the hospital, Kyungsoo learns a little about the homeless person, even if they barely talk to each other, spending most of their time either in awkward silences or speaking to various doctors, nurses, and such.

First things first, his name is Park Chanyeol, twenty-seven years old, according directly to himself, since he has no sort of ID with him. He’s been living in the streets for longer than a year but shorter than two, and his hands are _ruined_.

“You could’ve lost them, Mr. Park,” the doctor scolds him sternly as she undoes the bandages to reveal a bigger mess within, swollen flesh and blobs of pus and blood and, really, total nightmare fuel. “This infection is very serious. Have you been having fevers, bouts of shivers, halucinations?”

“Uh,” Chanyeol blinks. “Maybe…?”

Kyungsoo and the doctor glare in unison.

So, Channyeol ends up with brand new bandages, very harsh advice, and a list of medications he most definitely can’t afford.

And, if anyone needs any sort of proof that Kyungsoo is in fact one of the most soft-hearted and good-willed people in planet Earth, this is it, right here, right now.

“Thank you… for having me…” Chanyeol mumbles timidly as he walks through Kyungsoo’s front gate, so hunched in humbleness that it reduces his height by half.

“Just for tonight,” Kyungsoo lets him know. “In compensation for destroying your box.”

“Don’t mind,” Chanyeol shrugs it off with one of his horribly bloated hands. “It was all old and damp anyway. I think a dog peed on it when I was away.”

Kyungsoo makes a face. “You’ve been sleeping on dog pee.” He doesn’t even need to pay attention to unlock the door; practice does make perfect after all. “That’s depressing. Please take a bath. Use the hot water, if you need to. Just… wash it all off.”

At the mention of a bath, Chanyeol’s eyes twinkle, and, at the addition of hot water, they light up like limelight. “Can I really?”

“It’s not that you can. You should. You _must_ , actually,” Kyungsoo reinforces, already pushing Chanyeol down the hallway rather roughly. On the way, just as they’re getting at the door, Chanyeol’s stomach roars like an angry lion – too loud for any of them to ignore it.

“…” It’s almost possible to see Chanyeol turn red under all the dirt. Kyungsoo doesn’t feel anything but a bone-deep exhaustion that manifests itself through a heartfelt sigh.

“Take your bath and I’ll cook something for you,” he promises half-heartedly, pushing Chanyeol into the bathroom, feeling a headache form behind his eyeballs. “There’s liquid soap over the sink, and you can use the towel on the rack. I’ll find some clothes for you.”

“Wait!” Chanyeol calls just as he’s walking out, and he slowly, very slowly, turns his head to face him. “I—my hands. How do I… you know…”

Kyungsoo takes a good look at him. Both his hands are bandaged, and he absolutely cannot get them wet, or it could worsen the infection. Meanwhile, he, himself, is a pile of grime, in definite need of a good scrubbing, from the tip of his toes to the ends of his hair. Kyungsoo takes a long, hard look at that (apparently) unsolvable equation and decides that he is too tired for that.

“I believe you’ll come up with something,” he deadpans, slamming the door on Chanyeol’s face, and setting off to his other duties.

A quick rummage through Kyungsoo’s closet reveals a modest pile of forgotten ex-boyfriend’s clothes, ones too old or too ugly to be sold or donated. Kyungsoo selects the largest pieces – Chanyeol, after all, looks ten feet tall from Kyungsoo’s point of view – and briefly goes back to the bathroom, just in order to leave the clothes there and go fix both of them a simple meal. The door is unlocked; as he goes in, Kyungsoo figures that Chanyeol can’t lock doors with bandages that thick.

He… can’t seem to undress, either.

His head is halfway out down his shirt, which is stuck between his elbows. Kyungsoo suffers from a small shock when he sees how prominent his ribs are under the skin, and the sight must’ve triggered a rush of sympathy in him, because he soon finds himself tugging Chanyeol’s shirt off his arms. The repulse kicks in just a second later, though, and Kyungsoo barely touches the fabric before tossing it in the general direction of Hell.

“Thanks,” Chanyeol says, beaming, and Kyungsoo is a bit confused at his… smile.

“You haven’t showered in a year but you aren’t missing one single tooth,” Kyungsoo says analytically, taking a long, good look at Chanyeol’s teeth. They’re in good condition for a homeless person’s mouth – suspiciously good. “Are you really living in the streets?”

“I showered last week okay! It’s just—a lot happened recently,” Chanyeol takes a defensive step back, leading Kyungsoo to realize he’s way too far into his personal space. He retreats. “I wash and brush my teeth at shelters. Comb my hair and all. Eat. But like, as I said…” he makes a vague hand gesture, refraining from repeating himself.

“So, in retrospect, you haven’t brushed your teeth in a week,” Kyungsoo comments. The face Chanyeol makes is priceless – a hungry dog couldn’t look more dejected. “Well, go take your bath. Those are your clothes,” he nods towards the sink. “Also, there are some toothbrushes in that cabinet. You can use them.”

“Thank you,” Chanyeol mutters, looking a bit glum… or perhaps just embarrassed? Kyungsoo has to bite back a smile.

“I gotta go cook.” Without a word or a spare glance at his guest, Kyungsoo leaves the bathroom, softly closing the door behind him, and sets off to the kitchen at last.

 

 

 

Kyungsoo isn’t the best cook on Earth, but, by watching Chanyeol eat, one could be fooled.

“You’re gonna have a stomach ache,” Kyungsoo adverts when Chanyeol inhales the first portion, and still relentlessly devours a generous second one. “And if you throw up anywhere in my house other than the toilet, you _will_ clean it up.”

“No wowwies,” Chanyeol assures him, mouth full to its limit. “I’ll take responsibility. It’s the first time in ages I’m eating real food.”

That makes Kyungsoo feel something akin to pity towards Chanyeol. Or is it sympathy? Or, maybe, flattery? He looks down at his own plate, and his oddly-colored, slightly disjointed kimchi fried rice stares back at him. “It’s nothing much,” he mutters, poking at the irregular cabbage slices in the mix.

“Are you joking? This is delicious!” Chanyeol objects, looking genuinely offended. “I’d give anything to have this three times a day. Like, anything.”

Kyungsoo scoffs. “Do you say this to everyone who gives you food? You must get into an awful lot of trouble.”

“Of course not! When people give me leftovers, of course I’m thankful, but that’s that and this is this,” he affirms categorically. “No one ever gave me a meal. It’s completely different.”

“So it is…” Kyungsoo watches Chanyeol fish for the scrapes of the so-called meal, made mostly of slightly-too-oily kimchi and bell pepper bits. Chanyeol looks pitiful. It makes Kyungsoo feel like he might die in the streets if—uh, when Kyungsoo kicks him out the next day.

An idea dawns upon him, slowly, like holy sunshine (or maybe Satan’s limelight). Immediately, Kyungsoo realizes it might sound a bit like a bad decision, but, really, it’s not. In this context, in this situation, it’s quite the good one, actually.

“Chanyeol,” he calls, and Chanyeol looks up instantly, like a trained pet. “Wanna make a deal?”

His facial expression stiffens. “Is it about something illegal?”

“No, not really,” Kyungsoo assures him. “Do you want to stay here?”

Silence. Chanyeol blinks, face blank. “As in… tonight?”

“As in, for however long you want,” Kyungsoo supplies helpfully. “I’ll cook for you, you can take baths whenever you feel like it, and, who knows, maybe I can get you a real bed set up.” After a second thought, Kyungsoo adds, “or a futon, at least.”

Chanyeol’s face is still a bright display of vivid nothingness. He clearly has no idea of what is going on. “Uh,” he mutters. “I… really don’t have any money, you know…”

“You don’t have to pay bills.”

“…” his mouth moves as if many words were trying to come out, but none actually did. He briefly shuts his lips, brows slowly coming to form one tense line over his eyes as he thinks. Kyungsoo figures that it’s all sounding too good to be true to him.

“I do have my conditions,” he clarifies, and something akin to relief washes over his guest. Chanyeol nods in comprehension, and, before he can start guessing, Kyungsoo resumes talking. “You’ll have to obey me. Unconditionally. If I tell you to stand, you stand, and if I tell you to sit, you sit. Understood?”

Chanyeol nods.

“Good. And,” Kyungsoo, who has raised one finger unconsciously when reciting the first condition, goes along with it and lifts a second one. “You must be home every time I’m home, and available at all times. Always around me.” Full stop. The silence stretches a little. “That’s it. So?”

Chanyeol suddenly looks startled. “That’s it?”

“That’s it.” Kyungsoo nods solemnly. “So?” he repeats.

“Wait, so,” Chanyeol processes his thoughts out loud. Kyungsoo is patient. “If I become your slave, you’ll let me stay here for free?”

Kyungsoo frowns, frustrated. “’Slave’ is not how I’d put it,” he explains. “But if it suits you…”

“A pet, then,” Chanyeol corrects himself. “For free?” Pause. “You’re not… I mean… I don’t have to do anything weird, do I?” He scratches his arm awkwardly. “Like, I don’t know, hide bodies—”

“If you don’t like it here, you can just leave,” Kyungsoo cuts him off, and he realizes a tad too late that he had been harsher than initially intended. Well, whatever. “It’s not like I’d chase you if you left.”

It has a final tone to it. No more questions; is there anything else to question? Either Chanyeol takes it, or he leaves the morning after. 

This time, the silence stretches much, much more. In the distance, Kyungsoo’s kitchen clock ticks.

“I honestly,” Chanyeol suddenly breaks the silence, looking almost frighteningly serious. “I honestly don’t see any reasons to say no.”

Now, it’s Kyungsoo who blinks, a bit doumbfounded. “Then… don’t…?”

“I won’t,” the homeless man nods firmly. “It’s a deal then.”

So it is. 

 

 

Kyungsoo isn't much of a morning person at all. For the first twenty minutes after his alarm clock goes off, he's barely a human being, functioning almost entirely on muscle memory. And, well, muscle memory isn't exactly a quick learner.

So, next morning, as he's heading to the kitchen to fix himself a meal, he trips on something oddly warm, and is startled fully awake as his body topples to the floor. 

“Holy _shit_ ,” he hisses, breaking the fall with his hands. The pain shoots up his wrists, all the way up to his shoulder. Impressive. As he gets right back up, adrenaline thrumming in his ears, he frantically searches for the cause of his incident, and soon finds… legs.

A long, terribly skinny pair of legs. It brings the memory back immediately. Ah. The homeless guy.

He just woke up so fast that a headache is already approaching.

“Oi,” he groans, giving Chanyeol’s legs a well-aimed kick. “What are you doing? You’re in my way.”

As if to mock him, Chanyeol snores.

He doesn’t show any signs of being awake though, and Kyungsoo is usually good at telling those. His breathing is slow, his face is completely relaxed. He’s just… placed quite far away from the futon, curled around himself on the floor, looking impossibly pitiful. Kyungsoo is thankful to himself for letting this guy in.

He kicks Chanyeol again, this time right below his ribs, where the flesh is the softest.

“Wake up,” he demands as Chanyeol winces in his sleep. Another kick, this time not as brutal. “Wake up or no breakfast for you.”

This seems to be more effective than the kicking. Chanyeol moves, turns to his side - then suddenly opens his eyes wide, looking positively terrified.

“I’m awake,” he announces. Kyungsoo suppresses a laugh.

“Good.” Kyungsoo states, rubbing the leftover sleepiness off his eyes. “Now get up and wash your face while I cook breakfast.”

To Kyungsoo’s own surprise, Chanyeol obbeys immediately. Stumbling and fumbling, he springs up to his feet, making a drowsy walk to the bathroom as Kyungsoo watches in stunned silence. Well, that was quicker than he thought it would be…

Now, about breakfast…

After a brief moment of thinking, during which Kyungsoo accidentally allows himself to worry, he wonders what he should cook - what Chanyeol would like to eat. Then, when he realizes what he’s doing, he laughs. What’s that concern for?

“Are you allergic to anything?” Kyungsoo shouts for Chanyeol to listen. “You better not break out or something, I don’t have time to take you to the hospital.”

In all but three seconds, Chanyeol shows up at the kitchen, face washed but still bloated as hell. His eyes are barely open. “Eggs,” he answers simply, voice rusty.

“I see. Anything else?” Kyungsoo is thinking grilled fish and rice. Healthy! And easy to make.

“No. If it’s not eggs, I’d even eat garbage,” Chanyeol grumbles, leaning against the doorway as if preparing himself to sleep right then, right there. “In fact--”

“Don’t say anything,” Kyungsoo interrupts him, quickly getting started on grilling the fish. “I don’t wanna know. Go get the… dishes…” he trails off once he takes a glance at Chanyeol’s hands and remembers they’re good for nothing as of now. “You know what, just go watch some TV and wait for breakfast, okay?”

“Roger that,” Chanyeol nods grogilly and slithers away to the living room.

Making such simple breakfast is nothing to Kyungsoo; when it comes to speed-cooking, he’s an expert. The fish wind up a bit burnt, as well as the rice, which is also a bit bland-taste, but who cares? It’s edible. It’s not meant to be a Christmas feast.

When he reaches the living room, he finds the TV on, with a typical early morning show on, and Chanyeol splayed on the floor, asleep. His face, starting to reaquire its natural shape, is free of any kind of tension. He look blissfully peaceful.

Kyungsoo… he’s just human. He can’t resist an urge so strong, so he acts on it.

He walks up to Chanyeol, carefully resting the food on the coffee table as he kneels down, and, once he’s close enough, he jabs his fingers into the soft of Chanyeol’s waist.

Chanyeol seizes instantly.

“AFFGSKDHAKL,” he gurgles, hitting his elbows quite hard on the table, and if Kyungsoo were one second slower breakfast would’ve met a gruesome end on the floor.

“Hey, watch it,” Kyungsoo complains, checking if none of the food spilled. “Get up and eat. I need to go to work.”

“I’m up, I’m up,” Chanyeol announces, clumsily propping himself on his forearms to sit up. While he does so, Kyungsoo spares his hands a glance, and notices how much better the bandages look, even if these, which are relatively new, are already a bit stained with pus. 

“Oh, and you have to take your medicine…” Kyungsoo trails off, mentally reviewing his schedule for the day. “I’ll buy it when I come home from work. If you get a fever, call me, my cellphone number is written down next to the phone.” For long forgotten ex-boyfriends. Kyungsoo just never bothered to remove it from there. “There’s food in the fridge, help yourself. Also feel free to roam around the house, but DON’T,” Kyungsoo raises a finger for emphasis. “DON’T. Enter my room. Under any circumstances. Understood?”

“Yessir,” Chanyeol nods firmly, sitting upright like a good kid at school. There’s a brief moment of silence between the two of them after that – which is when Kyungsoo realizes Chanyeol is waiting for permission to eat.

“Let’s eat,” Kyungsoo gives such permission, and immediately does Chanyeol maneuver himself towards the food. Lord, Chanyeol is a funny sight. He just barely can wrap his fingers around the chopstick. As much as it’s sad that he’s in that situation, Kyungsoo can’t help but to be a bit entertained.

He hears the kitchen clock tick, and immediately stops watching Chanyeol, focusing in eating his breakfast.

The meal is a rather pleasant one. Chanyeol eats much slower this time, but he still compliments the food at least once between every mouthful – “this is so good, wow”, “seriously this tastes so good I can’t believe it”, “even the rice by itself tastes good!” – and Kyungsoo is growing wary of those compliments. It’s just grilled fish and rice, no cooking show material, could Chanyeol be mocking him? Well… for now, Kyungsoo accepts all the compliments very gracefully.

The finish quickly, with no small talk besides Chanyeol’s praises to the food, and Kyungsoo is kind enough to take all the plates to the kitchen while Chanyeol guiltily follows behind.

“Sorry,” he mutters, looking precisely like a dog being scolded.

“Don’t mind. Focus on healing your hands for now. The longer this goes on for, the more troublesome it’ll be for me,” Kyungsoo affirms, unsure if he managed to balance concern and nonchalance well enough in that sentence. Whatever. He has to hurry. 

Leaving Chanyeol behind in the kitchen, Kyungsoo rushes to the bathroom to brush his teeth. As he does so, a bit more brutally than recommended by dentists, he gives his bedroom’s door a thoughtful glance. Hm. Maybe he should do something to be sure whether Chanyeol obeyed him or not when he gets home from work at night…

The solution comes as a pink post-it, folded in half and carefully inserted between the doorframe and the now closed door. Satisfied, Kyungsoo finishes brushing his teeth, storms through the living room, grabs his blazer and bag, and shouts a hasty ‘bye bye’ at Chanyeol before leaving the house.

A faint voice can be heard, telling him, “have a good day at work!”, as Kyungsoo leaves its owner behind.

 

 

Kyungsoo arrives at the company, and he sees Byun Baekhyun waiting for the elevator. He has to take the elevator too. Shit. Maybe he should take the stairs today? Having Byun Baekhyun be the first person you meet upon arriving a place _has_ to be a sign of bad luck in at least two cultures around the world. 

He attempts at ignoring his workmate and taking a French leave to the left, but the elevator doors are of very polished metal. Very reflective.

“Hey, Kyungsoo! Good morning,” Baekhyun turns around to greet him, and it’s the end for Kyungsoo. He replies to Baekhyun’s greeting with a pained, visibly forced smile. “Yikes. What’s wrong with you? It’s almost like you’re not glad to see me.”

“You’re pretty good at reading expressions, Baekhyun-sshi,” Kyungsoo says in a mocking professional tone. “We really should use this talent of yours to expand your horizons in this company.”

“You’re one incredibly cranky guy in the morning, you know. It must be a new world record.” The elevator dings in front of them. It’s slightly cramped, but both Kyungsoo and Baekhyun are small men, so they fit inside with relative easiness. “This is probably why—” Baekhyun starts adding in a whisper, but Kyungsoo hits his genitals with his bag just in time. Baekhyun suffers in silence. “ _You didn’t even let me finish!_ ”

“I know what you were going to say,” Kyungsoo hisses in reply. “Not funny. I skipped work for that guy. I’m still angry at his audacity.”

A pause. It’s hard to know if anyone else in the elevator is following the conversation, but Kyungsoo isn’t being specific about anything, so guesses it’s fine.

“Well,” Baekhyun starts off, completely recovered from the hit, it seems. “It happens? I don’t know. Do you want me to give you a pep talk?”

“I’ll pass,” Kyungsoo deadpans as the elevator dings once again – third floor. Here’s Kyungsoo’s stop. “Goodbye, Byun Baekhyun.”

“See you sometime later, I presume,” Baekhyun manages to squeeze out before the elevator door cuts him off.

Starting the walk towards his cubicle, Kyungsoo sighs. He’s completely sure Baekhyun is an omen of bad luck. Terrible luck, even. _Something_ is going to happen. 

 

 

Much to his chagrin, he is right.

He has a nice day at work. Lunch is tasty, even if the coffee is not, and he manages to get some really confusing reports (sometimes Kyungsoo wants to kill the people in charge of those) into nicely done charts and tables. Also, he doesn’t meet Baekhyun again. Pretty good day, if you ask him.

Subway is a bit crowded, but not enough to dampen Kyungsoo’s lowkey good mood. He arrives home at eight PM, thinking of what to cook as he opens the front door, which is when he’s greeted with the sight of Chanyeol splayed on the floor.

Kyungsoo wrinkles his nose. “You seriously should lose the habit of sleeping on the floor. You might catch a cold.” Only when he arrives at the living room does he get a good look at Chanyeol’s face.

And when he does, he frowns. Something is wrong. Chanyeol’s face is very red, and his eyes, half-lidded, are unfocused.

“Welcome home,” Chanyeol croaks. It’s almost comic.

“What’s wrong with you? Are you running a fever?” Kyungsoo kneels by his side, putting a hand on his forehead. The answer comes with the touch, a sensation similar to grabbing a just-out-of-the-toaster loaf of bread. “For how long?”

“Uh…” Chanyeol mutters as Kyungsoo sprints up to grab the thermometer. “A… couple of hours…?”

“Why didn’t you call me?” Kyungsoo asks dryly. His medicine cabinet is a mess, but at least the thermometer is always in a fairly visible place. He grabs it like it’s a relay race. “I told you to call me if anything happened, didn’t I?”

“It’s just a… fever…”

“ _Just a fever_. You can barely speak.” Kyungsoo jabs the thermometer under Chanyeol’s armpit with more force than necessary. “Stay put. You have a serious infection, Chanyeol. You could die from it. This is honestly no joke, do you want to die in my house and leave me to deal with the police?”

“I’m,” Chanyeol makes That face again. “I’m sorry.” It seems like Chanyeol is incapable of feeling guilty without looking like the allegoric kicked puppy.

“Save your breath.” Kyungsoo has his eyes on the thermometer. When it beeps, he pulls it immediately. “Forty-two degrees Celsius. This is literally lethal, Chanyeol.”

“I’m sorry.” Chanyeol’s eyes are starting to glisten, and Kyungsoo feels panic. Oh no, why this, he didn’t plan making Chanyeol cry…

“I’m taking you to the hospital. Come on,” Kyungsoo sprints up once again, throwing the thermometer on the couch with a feeble hope it won’t hit the floor and break. “Can you walk?”

“Yes.” Chanyeol affirms. He starts one of his maneuvers, trying to get up without using his hands, but Kyungsoo loses patience fairly quickly, and helps him up by his armpits. They are very sweaty. There are some regrets.

“Let’s go,” Kyungsoo urges, and it takes all in him not to dash through the front door and leave Chanyeol behind. He _hates_ taking care of sick people, for unknown reasons. It just makes him really restless. Maybe because, when he was a child, there was a general bout of panic in his house every time his father got sick, since he had AIDS. It’d explain why he gets so exasperated when he sees someone fall ill, no matter how trivial the illness might be.

This time, though, it’s not trivial. A fever that high isn’t trivial at all. And, once they’re out, Kyungsoo realizes they don’t have the time to call a cab, nor to take the subway.

“We’re going to the main street,” Kyungsoo communicates to Chanyeol, who’s wobbling by his side on the sidewalk. “Climb on my back.”

That even seems to wake Chanyeol up a little bit. He widens his eyes. “What?”

“You heard me. Climb on my back.” Kyungsoo turns around, leaning forward, for emphasis. “We don’t have time, and you can’t walk that far.”

“I… I’m much bigger… than you,” Chanyeol states the obvious.

“What, you think I can’t carry you? You’re skinny as a pole, you must weight naught,” Kyungsoo spites out. “Come _on_.”

At last, Chanyeol does as told. With one hop, he drapes himself over Kyungsoo’s back, feebly wrapping his legs around Kyungsoo’s waist, and his arms around Kyungsoo’s neck. As predicted, he doesn’t weigh much, but it’s not exactly naught. He can handle it, though. With minimal effort, he starts to walk.

They reach the main street within four minutes. During that time, Kyungsoo learns that carrying a person with a fever that high on his back, chest-to-back, is very uncomfortable. It’s like cooking a meal for three hours in a locked up kitchen. His back burns. Not to mention that Chanyeol’s head has fallen to Kyungsoo’s left shoulder, and not only does his hot breath tickle Kyungsoo’s neck in regular intervals, but also it makes Kyungsoo fret even more, wondering if he has fainted.

But well, they reach the main street, and Kyungsoo, with much effort and arm strength, manages to call a cab.

“Chanyeol? Are you still there?” Kyungsoo turns around to call, and they almost touch lips. Shit. He angles his head better. “I got a cab. Can you stand up?”

To his relief, Chanyeol opens his eyes, and grunts something unintelligible. Kyungsoo interprets that as a ‘yes’, but still helps him into the car, while instructing the driver to go ‘to the hospital, please,’, with ‘go as fast as you can’ implied. Kyungsoo takes the seat by Chanyeol’s side, and they depart.

Kyungsoo hopes his wallet is in his pocket.

Also, he needs spiritual protection against Byun Baekhyun.

 

 

Chanyeol spends the night in the hospital. Kyungsoo, under the justificative that Chanyeol wouldn’t know the way back home once he woke up, does so too.

He sleeps by Chanyeol’s bedside, head against the wall, and it’s a slightly fitful sleep, but he manages.

Once again, if this isn’t a proof of how kind-hearted Kyungsoo is, what will be?

 

 

The fever incident serves as a lesson: if anything happens – _anything_ , specially fevers – Chanyeol is to call Kyungsoo.

However, Chanyeol calls so seldom, and has small problems so often – like not eating anything all day, and having a very brief hallucination of Spiders Everywhere – that Kyungsoo picks up the habit of calling home to check upon him. 

“Did you take your medicine?” It’s usually the first question he asks.

“ _Yes! I got an alarm clock that was in the guest’s room – sorry, I don’t know if I should, but I did – and set it up for medicine time_ ,” Chanyeol answers cheerfully. After starting on the meds, Chanyeol’s condition improved significantly: he had less intense, sparser fevers and bouts of shivering. The hallucinations are apparently gone. 

“Good. And lunch?” 

“ _I ate some beansprouts with the rice from breakfast. And vinegar_.” Kyungsoo winces, and it’s like Chanyeol can hear it. “ _It was really tasty! Your rice is really delicious, you know_.”

Despite himself, Kyungsoo’s cheeks turn a very light pink. “Well, if you say so, then good. Anything else I should know?”

“ _Hm. Not really_.” Talking to Chanyeol over the phone is nice. His voice sounds even deeper, it’s somehow soothing. “ _I’m watching TV right now. A documentary about rainforests_.”

“Sounds interesting.” A pause. “I’ll go back to work then. Take care.”

“ _Yessir!_ ” Chanyeol promptly replies, and Kyungsoo can almost see him nod. “ _Do your best at work!_ ”

“I will. I always do. Bye bye.”

“ _Bye bye!_ ” And Kyungsoo hangs up. 

He turns on his gyratory chair, ready to immerse himself in graphics once again, and almost has a cardiac arrest when he spots Byun Baekhyun watching him over the walls of his cubicle.

“Who were you talking to?” Baekhyun asks with a suggestive grin.

“What are you doing here?” Kyungsoo counterattacks. “You don’t work on this floor.”

“I came to talk with the director. But, before, I decided to stop by and say hello!” Baekhyun opens his arms wide, as if announcing a big prize of a lottery Kyungsoo would have never signed up for. “So? Who were you talking all lovey-dovey-ly with?”

“A friend,” Kyungsoo deadpans. “And ‘lovey-dovey-ly’ is not a word.”

“It is now. A _friend_ , you say?” Baekhyun wiggles his eyebrows. Kyungsoo sighs a heartfelt sigh, feeling impossibly tired.

“My friend was very sick the other day. I was just checking up on him, to see if he hadn’t died or anything. He lives alone.” At least Kyungsoo has this Very Useful Hability; he’s a great liar. Baekhyun seems to be at a loss. 

“Hm. I see.” He looks disappointed. Kyungsoo is secretly triumphant. “Well, gotta go talk to the director.” A wink. “I’ll keep an eye on you, Do Kyungsoo.”

“Spare me.” And this is how they part.

Kyungsoo will be dead before anyone at work finds out about Chanyeol. He’s the center of gossip way too often; for unknown reasons, everyone seems interested on who he’s dating and who he breaks up with. If they hear that someone else is staying at his house, he knows what’s going look like to everyone, and no explanation he offers will be enough.

Specially if he tries to put a name on what Chanyeol is to him. ‘Pet’. He’d never hear the end of it.

But well, a title is a title, and Kyungsoo is sure he treats Chanyeol with nothing but cordiality. How is that kind of talk lovey-dovey? Baekhyun just wants to start shit up.

He turns back to his computer, mind running through all the data he hast to sort, but fingers idly browsing through the tabs he has open. One of them catches his eye, as the memory of his intentions when he opened it come back to him. _Seoul Metropolitan Police_. _Missing People_. He finds it handy that they have a list online, and an updated one even (the last one dates to last week), even if it’s a bit hard to navigate. 

Of course, he’s been wondering. It’s been a little while since he met Chanyeol outside his house, and, during all this time, Kyungsoo has had little thoughts here and there. Where he’s from, why was he in the streets, what happened to his documents, had he ever had any? Was he born in the streets? Sometimes, when work was too boring, he’d stop and try to find an answer within what he knows about Chanyeol, but he has failed in coming to any theories so far. 

So, he guesses the list of currently missing people in the Seoul metropolitan area is a good place to start. He’s browsed it a couple of times already, without success, but he’s not giving up yet. Maybe he’s glossed over it. It’s always a possibility. So he keeps trying.

Four hours later, it’s time to go home, he has memorized a good part of the list, and Chanyeol is nowhere to be found in it. His eyes are red and tired, and his work remains undone, the data he was supposed to have sorted staring straight into his eyes.

Maybe he should try a simpler method.

 

 

“Uh?” Chanyeol widens his eyes, visibly taken aback. He’s midway chewing a mouthful of spaghetti, but it seems like he’s too startled to swallow for now. “Why the sudden question?”

“Because, apart from your name and age, which could very well be fake, I don’t know anything about you,” Kyungsoo explains coherently, having rehearsed that line innumerous times in the subway ride back home. “Remember our deal. Answer my question.”

At the mention of the deal, Chanyeol seems to retreat a little. Maybe Kyungsoo shouldn’t have mentioned it. Did it sound like some kind of intimidation? Chanyeol resumes chewing his food, swallows, and opens his mouth to speak.

“Well, uh, I was born in the suburbs. I graduated high school. I don’t know where my parents are.” He lists all those items with the same naturality, but Kyungsoo’s expression hardens at the last one, and he seems to notice it. “When I was eighteen, they moved out without warning me. I went on a trip with some friends and, when I came back, they were gone.”

“That’s… that’s ludicrous,” Kyungsoo frowns. “Did they leave a note or something?”

“Nope. Nothing at all. I was ejected from our house, eventually. And then, like, I lived in a bunch of places, but something always happened,” Chanyeol shrugs. “I got in trouble with loan sharks. Luckily, they’ve forgiven me now, but…” he raises his hands indicatively, and Kyungsoo pales. 

“You got that from loan sharks?” Chanyeol just nods. “Are you serious?!”

“They just hit my hand with a hammer. They also tore some of my fingernails off, but those are growing back already,” he glances at his thumbs. Kyungsoo had never noticed how much shorter those were compared to his other nails. He feels sick to his stomach. “Well, it’s in the past, this was for my interest. I paid what I owed. It was a relief, even though I ended up completely out of money.”

A moment of silence stretches over them. During that moment, Kyungsoo just stares at Chanyeol in disbelief over his past, while Chanyeol stares back with a small smile, awaiting more questions.

“What did you do for a living?” Is what Kyungsoo asks next.

“Oh, I’m a musician!” Chanyeol announces, puffing up in pride. Kyungsoo’s eyebrows curve sadly. “What? What’s wrong with being a musician?”

“You probably didn’t make a lot of money.”

Chanyeol hums thoughtfully. “You’re right. I was originally studying engineering, but I had to leave school after everything went down. Back then I decided that, hey, since I’m free from parental responsibilities, why not try to follow my dream? I had a guitar that my parents gave me for my seventeenth birthday, pretty sturdy one. Ended up selling it off to pay my debt, though,” he finishes off with a sigh. 

Kyungsoo has never felt so sorry for a person in his entire life. “I wonder how much a guitar costs,” he blurts out without thinking, and Chanyeol perks up immediately.

“If you bought me a guitar, I would implode from happiness,” he communicates just as Kyungsoo starts to regret saying that. “I would be, like, the happiest pet in the universe.”

“‘Pet’,” Kyungsoo repeats, chuckling humorlessly. “You got attached to this title.”

“Well, it suits me. I don’t pay bills and can’t do chores. All I can do is to love you and entertain you, just like a pet” he beams. Chanyeol’s head works in mysterious ways. “So, yeah, I would be the happiest among the happy pets. I’d do anything for you. _Anything_.”

Kyungsoo sighs. “I’m not going to buy you a guitar, Chanyeol,” he states, watching his ‘pet’ deflate visibly. “You can’t even play right now.”

Chanyeol blinks. He then directs his glance to his hands. “Right…”

Now that he knows the story behind the injuries, Kyungsoo feels even more sympathy for Chanyeol’s hands. His heart is way too soft for that shit. So it’s stronger than him – he puts his plate aside, kneels down, and ruffles Chanyeol’s hair, like he’d do to a dog.

“When your hands heal, I’ll buy you a guitar.” This sounds way too gushy to his own ears, so he adds, “a toy one. Or maybe a ukulele. How’s that?”

Regardless Kyungsoo’s second-thought additions to the sentence, Chanyeol brightens unimaginably. “I love it! A ukulele! I’m really good at playing it, you know!”

“Good to hear,” Kyungsoo rolls his eyes, and gets to his feet. There he has it; he now knows about Chanyeol’s origins, _and_ he’s probably got rid of ten years in purgatory with this majestic good action. It’s time to call it a day. “Put all of these in the dishwasher. Watch the hands. I’m going to sleep for now.”

“Goodnight!” Chanyeol says to his retreating back. “I love you!” he adds, and Kyungsoo’s lips smile against his own will.

 

 

“ _There’s a cooking show on, a French guy is teaching me how to make crème brûlée_ ,” Chanyeol tells Kyungsoo as the latter eats a sandwich at the common room. “ _Maybe I should try making some to you, hm?_ ”

“You’d burn down the kitchen,” Kyungsoo deadpans, mouth slightly full, and Chanyeol whines.

“ _I probably would…_ ” he admits, and there’s a pause after that. It’s a comfortable pause; Kyungsoo can hear the TV in the distance, and, even though he can’t make out the words, it makes him feel like he’s at home. “ _Uh… hey, Kyungsoo?_ ” Chanyeol chooses to break the silence just as Kyungsoo is taking a huge bite of the sandwich, so he can do nothing but hum in response. “ _Why don’t you tell me a bit about you?_ ”

Kyungsoo frowns in surprise. He swallows. “As in?”

“ _As in… where do you work? I always tell you ‘have a good day at work!’ and all but I don’t really know what you do_.”

“Mm.” Kyungsoo supposes that’s a reasonable curiosity to have. He takes a swig of his green tea before answering, “I work a normal office job.”

“ _Oh, that’s why you’re always in a suit_.”

“Yeah. In my current position I’m in charge of making sense out of other people’s half-assed reports,” he adds. “Also, before you ask, I’ve been raised in Seoul and am twenty-seven years old. Anything else?”

“ _Yes, I knew those! I, uh, I saw some of your documents accidentally. We’re the same age!_ ” Kyungsoo raises a brow. Chanyeol sounds a bit stalker-ish, but he’ll let it pass. “ _Hm… then, do you have a girlfriend?_ ”

Kyungsoo chokes on his green tea very loudly. Some of it spurts through his nose, even. The situation and the question itself are so bizarre that he can’t help but laugh, leaving Chanyeol audibly confused in his wake.

“ _What? What’s so funny?_ ” Chanyeol keeps asking on the other side of the line.

“Nothing. It’s just that…” unable to explain his own burst of laughter, he limits himself to answer. “No, I don’t have a girlfriend. I’ve never had a girlfriend. I had a lot of boyfriends, though.”

“ _… oh_ ,” Chanyeol pings back. “ _Oh, right! Right, sorry. Uh, so you don’t have one…_ ”

“No, the last one broke up… with me…” Kyungsoo is about to add ‘on the day we met’, but he sees Baekhyun coming in the distance, eyes locked on Kyungsoo’s figure and lips twisted in a positively evil grin. “Shit, Byun Baekhyun is coming. I’m aborting this call.”

“Who’s Byun Baekhyun?”

“I’ll tell you later. Bye,” Kyungsoo immediately hangs up and starts inhaling his sandwich, as if hoping to finish his lunch and depart before Baekhyun reaches him.

It’s a futile attempt.

“Still calling your _friend_ every day?” Baekhyun singsongs as he, completely uninvited, claims the seat by Kyungsoo’s side. Kyungsoo sighs.

“What, I can’t make phone calls anymore?” he retorts a little too defensively, and Baekhyun’s grin widens. 

“Sure, you can,” Baekhyun shrugs with fake nonchalance. One second later, he is draping an arm over Kyungsoo’s shoulder, pulling him way too close for comfort. “But well, since it’s just a _friend_ , he wouldn’t mind if I invited you out for some drinks right?”

“ _I_ would mind,” Kyungsoo backs off from Baekhyun’s half-hug with something akin to disgust. “Why are you asking me out?”

“I’m not! It’s just a happy hour. Fifth floor got a couple of transfers, and your floor just got a rookie too, right?” Now that he mentions it, Kyungsoo has heard something about that recently… “So yeah, drinks and barbecue at Sizzle tonight. How’s that? It’s been a while, right?”

Kyungsoo sighs. It has. When he was dating his now-ex-boyfriend, he passed on all the happy hours to spend time with him. Just recalling that particular memory leaves a bitter taste in Kyungsoo’s mouth. After some brief deliberation, he turns to Baekhyun and announces, “I’ll be there.” 

Baekhyun looks like he just won the Nobel. “Great!” He claps Kyungsoo’s back with unnecessary force, obviously on purpose, and gets on his feet. “See you tonight, then! You know, it’s about time you move on from that ex-b—”

Kyungsoo’s half-full bottle of green tea collides painfully with the back of Baekhyun’s head.

“Watch it,” Kyungsoo hisses. Just because Baekhyun was away from his reach, it didn’t mean he was safe.

Also, Kyungsoo makes a mental note: he probably should call Chanyeol to tell him he’ll come home late. Probably. Not now, though.

 

 

He forgets to. But that doesn’t matter for now.

“Cheers!” someone yells when everyone has got their beers.

“Cheers!” Everyone follows at their own time, and there’s a second of silence as everyone takes the first sip.

The chatter resumes immediately, loud and varied, each group talking about a completely unrelated thing. Kyungsoo usually hates noise, but, at moments like this, with cold draft beer in his hands and the thick smell of grilling meat in his nostrils, he doesn’t mind it one single bit.

“Your rookie is not here yet!” Baekhyun complains to Kyungsoo as if it’s his fault. Kyungsoo merely shrugs.

“I don’t even know him. We haven’t met yet.”

“Some of our transfers aren’t here yet either,” says Henry Lau, one of the very few nice people who work at the fifth floor, from where he’s sitting across Baekhyun. He’s drunken over half of his pint already. “The popular one, for example. Must be working overtime.”

“Or preparing for a grand entrance!” Baekhyun suggests, but Henry shakes his head.

“The guy is pretty down-to-earth. Which can’t be said about many of my co-workers,” he adds, shooting a spiteful glance at some very specific people. Kyungsoo nods darkly. “He arrived, what, last week? And he’s already pretty well-liked. Handsome, young, competent.” Henry sighs, finishing off his beer in one impressive gulp. “I can’t compete against that. Seconds, please!”

Kyungsoo shoots Henry a concerned look before turning his attention to the meat. Hm, it’ll take a while for it to finish cooking… without warning, Baekhyun’s elbow digs into his side, and he yelps in surprise.

“Sounds like _you_ got competition then,” Baekhyun teases, taking a sip of his own beer. “Isn’t it you who’s famous for being ‘handsome, young, and competent’ nowadays?”

“Is it?” Kyungsoo is unimpressed. He highly doubts it does. “I thought I was famous for being ‘a workaholic who can’t keep a boyfriend’.”

“Wasn’t me who said it.” Kyungsoo still stomps on his feet, though, for good measure. “Ouch! Hey!”

“Oh!” Kyungsoo joins the interjection fest, but for a different reason. He just remembered that he should probably call home to warn Chanyeol about the happy hour. He’s just whipped out his phone, simultaneously glancing around for a quiet(er) place to make a call, when he sees someone by the door – a sight that makes him feel like someone just dropped a bucket of icy cold water over his head.

The fingers he has around the phone grow limp. No. That’s not possible. He must be seeing things. 

“Oh, there he is. Junmyeon!” To Kyungsoo’s horror, Henry starts waving at the person, beckoning him to their table. “Over here, my boy! You’re late!”

“Sorry, I was… just…” The horror Kyungsoo was feeling grows tenfold when the person – Junmyeon – casts a look upon him. Of course, he recognizes him immediately. Of course. “I don’t believe this… Do Kyungsoo…?”

“Hm?” Henry perks up, glancing to Kyungsoo, who’s still frozen still, and then to Junmyeon. “You guys know each other?”

“I—yes! We went to high school together!” Junmyeon smiles widely, offering a hand for Kyungsoo to shake. “How’s it’s been?”

Kyungsoo gapes. “G-great!” He suddenly snaps out of it, smiling a bit hysterically as he shakes Junmyeon’s hand energically. “I’ve been great! Wow, what a coincidence, huh?”

“Tell me about it! Who knew we would end up in the same field!” Junmyeon looks genuinely happy to see him there, smiling sincerely in a way that makes his eyes light up. Kyungsoo wants to run away. Right now. “What do you do in the company?”

“Third floor,” Baekhyun answers for him, getting to his feet to greet Junmyeon too. “He sorts up the mess you guys at the fifth make.”

“Oh,” Junmyeon makes a face, turning to Kyungsoo once again, why? Why does he have to talk to him? “Sorry for that.”

“I’m Byun Baekhyun, by the way,” Baekhyun offers a hand, flashing Junmyeon his brightest smile. “I’m Kyungsoo’s bestest friend at the office! Hahaha!” Kyungsoo forces out a laugh, hitting Baekhyun’s chest with so much strength that he almost goes flying over the meat. Baekhyun keens. “Isn’t he just the sweetest of the guys!”

“You two do seem close,” Junmyeon comments a bit awkwardly, and Kyungsoo notices his smile start to fall a little. The fact he still notices this kind of thing makes him even more desperate to just _leave_. “I’ll… go over there greet my seniors. It was nice meeting you again, Kyungsoo.”

“Haha, likewise!” Kyungsoo smiles his best Miss Universe smile, waving as Junmyeon makes his trip to the other end of the table. As soon as the other has his back turned to him, though, the smile falls quicker than a rock in a lake, and he falls back on his seat just as quick.

Baekhyun glances at him with curiosity as he, too, sits back down. “Kyungsoo?” he calls “Are you—”

Kyungsoo grabs his shoulder. His fingers dig into Baekhyun’s flesh. “Watch over me,” he requests in an emotionless voice. “I need soju.”

Baekhyun wides his eyes all the way. “What’s with you?!”

“Did anyone say soju?” Henry’s eyes are wide for a different reason, and his arm is halfway up, ready to order.

“I’ll explain later. Pinky promise. I give you my word. Et cetera.” Kyungsoo might be entering shock state. “Right now I just need soju. Or plum wine. Plum wine would be nice.”

Baekhyun is even more horrified. “Shit, this is serious. Okay, if you’re going for soju, I’m going too,” he declares somewhat heroically, patting Kyungsoo in the back. Meanwhile, Henry starts cutting the meat, maybe a little too soon. “But promise me, no plum wine. You’ll wind up either dead or fired.”

“Well, I say,” Henry suddenly butts in, serving them a few steaming pieces of meat. They’re not as done as they could be, but hey, still edible. “Eat all the meat we can and change locations. I know a bar where no one will mind if you decide to go on a plum wine-inspired stripping spree.” He shoves some meat into his mouth, visibly regretting it almost immediately, eyes filling with tears from the heat. “So?” He chews with some difficulty. “What do you say?”

Kyungsoo and Baekhyun exchange a glance. Baekhyun clearly has his doubts. When even Baekhyun, who’s has a bit of a devil-may-care attitude, thinks an idea might not be very good, it’s because the idea isn’t good at all.

Kyungsoo glances emptily at the table, and his eyes catch sight of Junmyeon’s smiling face.

“Call,” he says at last, finishing his beer in one shot and drinking the meat. When’s he managed to fit all the meat into his mouth, with some difficulty, he pulls some money from his pocket and slams it onto the table, not caring to check how much it was. “Leff’s gef ouf of fere.” 

 

 

Kyungsoo doesn’t strip, but it’s merely by chance. Henry does. Baekhyun sings the entire discography of The Rush with a bunch of strangers, and Kyungsoo curses a whole lot and downs half a bottle of soju on his chin and neck, trying to find his mouth. He also buys a round for the entire bar, who give him a standing ovation. There was some plum wine involved, very little, but enough to cause damage.

By the end of the night, Henry and Baekhyun might be drunk senseless, but Kyungsoo is on a whole new level of shitfaced.

“YOU GUYS,” Kyungsoo yells as Baekhyun and Henry attempt to take him home. “I THINK I FORGOT CHANYEOL.”

“Who’s Chanyeol,” Henry slurs. He might be starting to sober up.

“No I didn’t forget I forgot,” Kyungsoo explains, and Baekhyun ‘ah’s and nods as if he understood. “Guuuuys, I need to go home.”

“We’re getting there,” Baekhyun reassures him.

“I don’t know Kim Junmyeon!” Kyungsoo wails. “WHO’S KIM JUNMYEON!!”

All in all, it’s a very difficult trip, but they make it. Henry takes him to the door as Baekhyun throws up by the sidewalk.

“Your keys,” Henry requests.

“Ring the doorbell,” Kyungsoo instructs.

“Kyungsoo, you live alone.”

“Ring the bell!” Kyungsoo insists, and his senior is visibly lost at that. No choice is left to him but ring the bell.

“See?” He says within one second. “There’s no one—” 

Chanyeol opens the door with one violent swing. He and Henry jump back at the same time, equally startled to see each other.

Kyungsoo merely grins smugly at Henry’s general direction.

“… good evening,” Chanyeol greets unsurely.

“… is this… Do Kyungsoo’s house…?” Henry, like more than a handful people in the office, knows that Kyungsoo lives by himself, so he’s comprehensibly confused. 

“Yes. I’m, uh, staying over for a while,” Chanyeol is growing more awkward by the second. When he takes a good look at Kyungsoo, he frowns. “What happened to him?”

“I forgot yoooou, Chanyeoooliieee,” Kyungsoo whines, breaking free from Henry’s supportive hold around his torso to lung himself onto Chanyeol’s chest. “I’m sowwy I’m so sowwy so sowwy!!”

“He’s very drunk,” Henry explains. “And so am I. Goodbye.”

“G… goodbye…” Chanyeol is very confused, and Henry doesn’t stay back to explain. He’s gone in seconds. Chanyeol has no choice but to close the door and accept the situation.

By then, Kyungsoo is on the floor, limbs spread in a starfish shape. Chanyeol frowns with concern. “How are you feeling?”

“Drunk.” Kyungsoo chuckles. “Sleepy. I don’t know any Kim Junmyeons.”

“Neither do I,” Chanyeol affirms sympathetically. Kyungsoo rises, propping himself on his elbows, and watches Chanyeol distractedly for a minute.

“Take my shoes off,” he demands, sliding a foot up Chanyeol’s thigh, landing it on his lap. It creates a slight tension in the air, a stiffness in Chanyeol’s shoulders and face, that Kyungsoo is unable to sense or care for at the moment. 

Chanyeol does take his shoes off, though, with surprisingly little hesitance. His bandaged fingers wrap slowly around the black dress shoe, and just as slowly he slides it off Kyungsoo’s socked feet, out of care. Before Kyungsoo can even ask, he does the same to the other foot, lifting it to his lap as well before, slowly, always slowly, always carefully, taking this shoe off as well.

Kyungsoo’s head is clouded, but, among all incoherent thoughts running through his mind right now, he feels appreciation. “Take me to my room,” is what he demands next, and this time around Chanyeol does hesitate.

“Your room…?” He looks like he thinks that’s a trick question. Trick request, even. “But… I’m not supposed to go into your room…”

“Who cares!” Kyungsoo throws his hands in the air. “I wanna sleep, Chanyeol, but I can’t walk. Take me? Pwease?” Kyungsoo bats his eyelashes, attempting at aegyo or something similar. The last time he used aegyo was… the last time he was this drunk, which was a long time ago.

“I… okay,” Chanyeol is in a predicament. Kyungsoo has a valid point, but… “Okay. Just… please don’t be angry at me tomorrow, please.”

Kyungsoo coos, grabbing Chanyeol’s face with both his hands. “How can I ever get angry at yoooouuu?” He squeezes, and squeezes, and then suddenly lets go. “Come on. Carry me.”

Chanyeol, helpful, obedient Chanyeol, does as told. He sweeps Kyungsoo off the floor a bit clumsily, but efficiently, holding him up bridal style, which makes Kyungsoo chuckle a whole lot. In all but three seconds, Chanyeol’s face contorts in a grimace – and Kyungsoo, out of himself as he is at the moment, can’t tell why.

He _is_ kind enough to turn the doorknob for Chanyeol, though, when they get there. The pink post-it flutters past them, unnoticed.

“Are you sure you don’t want to—take a… shower…” Chanyeol has just laid Kyungsoo on his bed, and is midway asking an important question when he turns the lights on. Kyungsoo hisses at the sudden brightness, but Chanyeol doesn’t notice it. He’s just… bewildered by what he sees.

Just for starters, the walls of Kyungsoo’s bedroom are painted black. Kyungsoo is a fan of the color black, and he finds black walls soothing when it’s time to sleep. But that’s not even _close_ to being the most shocking thing in his room.

“Are… are those…” Chanyeol is at a loss, staring at the shelves with wide eyes.

“Hm?” Kyungsoo lazily looks around, eyes open barely enough for him to see anything. “Oh, my toys! Stylish, right?” He says it with pride. “I bought them over the years.”

On the dark grey shelves around Kyungsoo’s room, there are dozens and dozens of dildos. All kinds of dildos. From realistic cyber skin ones to, I shit you not, dragon dildos and tentacle dildos. Chanyeol’s eyes only grow wider and wider as he scans the room.

“I,” he says simply, locking eyes with one truly otherworldly double-ended beast of hell.

“I barely use them though,” Kyungsoo rolls his eyes, as if that’s a waste. “It’s just for decoration.”

“I see…” When Chanyeol spares Kyungsoo, who’s started undoing his shirt, a glance, he turns the exact color of cooked beetroot. “Um—”

“Come here,” Kyungsoo beckons Chanyeol, eyes half-lidded, and no one can blame Chanyeol for being a bit wary of that. “Don’t wory. Come here,” he repeats, making the ‘come hither’ gesture with his finger. 

It’s stronger than him. Chanyeol obeys, leaning as close as he can without reaching the danger zone.

Kyungsoo, of course, isn’t satisfied by that. With one swift tug on the collar of Chanyeol’s T-shirt, he pulls him closer. Much closer. Chanyeol falls on his palms with a yell, immediately falling onto his elbows and _even closer_.

“I reek of soju, don’t I?” Kyungsoo asks, voice low, barely above a whisper. “Do you like soju, Chanyeol?”

There’s a slight hitch in Chanyeol’s breath. His eyes dance, unsure of where to look at. “Uh, sometimes?” He laughs nervously, like a kid who doesn’t know the right answer to a teacher’s question.

“Hmm.” Kyungsoo’s hand is closed around the fabric of Chanyeol’s T-shirt, and he makes use of that. He pulls. Slowly, and surely, and he closes his eyes as their lips, then their tongues, meet.

Chanyeol’s mouth is delightfully warm. His kiss tastes like fire itself, his mouth pliant and wet as Kyungsoo pushes his tongue against his, and the sigh Chanyeol lets out tastes as delicious as candy when Kyungsoo swallows it. His hand has found Chanyeol’s hair without his permission, caressing and pulling as they kiss deeper, and deeper, for what feels like years.

The moment they part isn’t a conscious decision, but it’s mutual. Kyungsoo’s eyes find Chanyeol’s with a smile, but Chanyeol doesn’t smile back. He looks… stunned. 

“I like your taste,” Kyungsoo lets go of Chanyeol’s collar, hand travelling down to find the hem of his shirt. When it does, his fingers sneak under it, and travel up, up, up. “You’re so warm…”

“Kyungsoo…” There’s a molten hotness in Chanyeol’s voice, in the look he casts Kyungsoo – a slow-burning feeling that’s starting to consume him. Kyungsoo licks his lips at it. Sounds like something he’d love to devour.

“Mm.” His fingers flicker over nipple at the same time his lips find the base of Chanyeol’s neck. There, he plants a sweet kiss, a suggestion. “Say, Chanyeol,” he slurs out, breath starting to come out a bit heavily. “Why don’t we have sex tonight?”

Chanyeol gasps. He gasps in a startle great enough to shake all the previous feelings off him. “W—I—w—what?!” He sputters.

“Let’s have sex,” Kyungsoo repeats like it’s nothing. To him, right now, it really isn’t. “Let’s fuck. You want me, right?”

“But—wait a minute, Kyungsoo, you’re drunk,” Chanyeol says as if he had only realized it now. All of his acts from the previous minutes flash through his eyes, visibly so. “You’re very drunk, oh God, what if you regret it tomorrow?!”

“I’m not even gonna remember anything tomorrow,” Kyungsoo retorts realistically, a hint of a whine in his voice.

“Even worse!” Chanyeol scrambles to get off Kyungsoo, and up his feet. Kyungsoo feels cold for a brief moment, the same moment Chanyeol uses to glance around the shelves. “Here,” he grabs the nearest dragon dildo he sees, a majestic dark orange phallus of impressive girth. “J-just settle for this! I’ll be right outside!”

And he dashes.

Kyungsoo glances thoughtfully at the dildo. “How cold,” he says, referring to many things at the same time.

It’s not a minute before he lies down, spoons the dildo, and passes out.

 

 

The next day should have never come.

Kyungsoo wakes up beside the toilet of his suite’s bathroom. Blessed be suites. Blessed be muscle memory. 

His head hurts so much he can’t see straight. It’s almost like he’s still drunk, which could very well be true, considering his condition when he went to bed last night.

When he… went… to bed… last night…

Like a scene of a nineties self-discovery movie, snippets of the previous night start flashing in his mind. There’s Henry Lau’s nipples, Baekhyun’s singing voice, some guy’s awesome beard, the aftertaste of meat…

Eventually it all comes back, include his top two most surprising, least pleasant memories: meeting Kim Junmyeon, and kissing Chanyeol.

He throws up a little more, for good measure.

He understands kissing Chanyeol. Really, he does. The context was favorable for such a thing to happen, and, as much as Kyungsoo regrets it, c’est la vie. But meeting Kim Junmyeon, after all these years? And not only that but now he works at the same place he does too? C’est pas la vie, c’est some kind of karmic revenge for not doing enough good actions a day, probably.

Kyungsoo would like to scream, very much so, but he has to resign to a sigh for now, lest he scare the living daylights out of Chanyeol.

Oh, Chanyeol. Chanyeol is out there somewhere, watching TV or eating leftovers or just being there. Or hey, maybe he’s still asleep, what time is it? But well, regardless whether he’s asleep right now or not, Kyungsoo will have to look at him in the eye sometime soon. That’s… unfortunate, to put it gently. If Chanyeol asks for an explanation for the kiss and his lewd proposal from the night before, he’ll have nothing. How will he react?

 _Maybe he’ll be angry and leave_. The thought causes mixed feelings to stir up inside Kyungsoo. Or is that his intoxicated stomach tossing and turning? Hard to tell.

Three knocks on his bedroom door almost make his soul flee his body. “Kyungsoo?” It’s Chanyeol. Obviously. If it had been anyone else, Kyungsoo would officially have a problem. “Are you alright?”

“I’m—” His inside choose that exact moment to purge All The Alcohol out. He even burps. “I’m… as alright as possible, I guess.”

A pause. “Do you want some help?”

“No need. Just… leave some hangover medicine for me over the kitchen counter.” He rubs his temples. He feels like death. “And make me some tea, if you will.”

“Yessir,” Chanyeol replies as usually, and it makes Kyungsoo thinks, maybe things don’t have to change because of the kiss. Maybe Chanyeol didn’t think much of it, and won’t even mention it today, and it’ll remain forgotten and lost in the past along with so many other embarrassing alcohol-related moments. Maybe. It doesn’t kill to have some hope.

With that sort of positive thinking, Kyungsoo decides to take a shower, in order to be at least able to get on his feet.

He throws up in the shower too.

Plum wine: never again. 

 

 

And then, to sweeten his day even more, all his hopes of the kiss not being a big deal go down the pipe when Kyungsoo goes to the kitchen fetch his medicine, makes eye contact with Chanyeol, and the latter blushes so hard his _scalp_ turns red.

“Good morning!” He greets as he looks away, in the same hysteric tone Kyungsoo had used to talk to Junmyeon the day before. “Tea is almost ready! Your medicine is over there!”

“… thank you.” Somehow, this is even more awkward than having to talk about it. Chanyeol is terrible at hiding his feelings. Maybe they should just… do the talking thing. “Uh, sorry about yesterday.”

“Haha, it’s okay! Everyone drinks too much sometimes, I got drunk, like, a hundred times in college,” Chanyeol dismisses it with a hand gesture, and it’s so painfully forced that Kyungsoo almost cringes. “So, what did you drink yesterday?”

“Soju—wait a minute.” Kyungsoo belatedly realizes what’s different about Chanyeol today, beside the minor psychological trauma. “Your hands!”

“Oh?” Chanyeol glances down at his hands and immediately sees what Kyungsoo means: they’re bare of bandages. And whole! “Oh, yeah! I went to change the bandages today and saw they’re pretty much cured by now. They’re just a little swollen.” Kyungsoo wonders if he’s at fault for them being swollen. Actually, now that the memory of commanding Chanyeol to carry him comes back to his mind, he’s positive about it.

“That’s really good,” for the first time today, Kyungsoo smiles genuinely. And, apparently, that makes Chanyeol a little flustered.

“Uh, there are some scabs on this palm though. And the fingers aren’t really moving that well yet,” Chanyeol demonstrates by moving his fingers a little, presumably to their maximum range. He can’t make a fist with either hands. “Maybe they never will, actually.”

“Of course they will,” Kyungsoo cuts him off. “Just, not right now, because the bones are still healing, but if you don’t do anything weird to them, they’ll be like new in no time.

Chanyeol hums in absentminded agreement, wrapping up the tea-making and serving the brown liquid to Kyungsoo in his favorite mug. Ah, it smells horrible. That’ll definitely fix him up. “Thanks,” he mutters, taking the medicine with the tea, and immediately complaining because, “ah, it’s hot!”

“So,” Chanyeol looks a fair deal less awkward now. He sits at the counter across Kyungsoo, grinning from ear to ear. “How about that ukulele now?”

Kyungsoo scoffs. With one brow raised, he measures Chanyeol up and down, surprised that he has broke through the kiss-induced awkwardness already. Chanyeol is a sturdy one, he gotta give him that. Maybe he likes that a little bit.

“I’ll give it some thought,” Kyungsoo grins back, reaching over the counter to mussel Chanyeol’s hair. The gesture brings some colour to Chanyeol’s cheek, a friendly blush rather than the previous Full-Body Redness Of Awkward And Horror, but something Kyungsoo has never seen before. It almost feels like kissing Chanyeol has earned Kyungsoo extra affection points with him, which is not half bad.

Wait, did he just conclude that kissing Chanyeol is not half bad? He frowns at himself.

“I’m gonna lie down for a while,” he states, already retreating to his bedroom with the tea in his hands. “Fix yourself something for lunch. Or dinner, I don’t know, whatever your next meal is.”

“Yessir,” Chanyeol’s usual reply follows him into the bedroom. So it’s all good. It’s all good and normal, except it _isn’t_.

For now, he’ll just try to sleep the weirdness away. It’s all he can do in this state.

 

 

Telling Baekhyun about Kim Junmyeon isn’t easy, and he postponed it for as long as he could, but, after everything that went down on that fatidic Friday night, he definitely owed him one. That, and he promised. Pinky promise. Gave him his word. Et cetera.

The thing about that story is, Kyungsoo isn’t only plagued by it, he’s ashamed of it. Ashamed of still remembering that old story, ashamed of hanging up on it. Ashamed of having fallen that hard for someone, specially that someone being the (allegedly) only student committee president in the school’s history to have forgotten every word of his welcome speech at the entrance ceremony.

“Wow,” Baekhyun raises his brows. “ _That_ Kim Junmyeon?”

“Let me finish.”

One year of Kyungsoo being hopelessly in love, then one year of dating, and then Junmyeon suddenly throwing all of that out of the window because he was graduating but, like, it’s not even like he was moving out of town, so, really, that was just a wicked dick move.

And then, what Kyungsoo is the most ashamed of is what comes next: years, and years, and years – perhaps a lifetime – of lingering feelings, of remembering, of trying to forget, of doubting himself. Is that the reason why he’s not affectionate enough to his boyfriends? Is that the reason why none of them can feel love coming from him? Is he still pining, after a whole decade since the break-up of his silly high school romance?

By the time he’s finished, Baekhyun has gone from surprised to empathetic to thoughtful. Kyungsoo is not sure if that’s a good sign, but he, himself, is torn between embarrassment and relief from letting it all out. 

“Who knew,” Baekhyun says at last, after a long period of deliberation.

“Who knew what,” Kyungsoo asks emotionless.

“No just… who knew.” Baekhyun shrugs. “You don’t seem like the kind of person who’d have a dramatic love story like this one.”

“That’s what worries me,” Kyungsoo groans. “Have I turned into an emotionless bag of dicks because of Kim Junmyeon? I’ve asked myself this over a hundred times. It plagues me.”

“I wouldn’t exactly define you as an ‘emotionless bag of dicks’, but I get where that’s coming from.” A pause. Baekhyun chews his bottom lip thoughtfully. “Okay, here’s what you have to do,” and when he says that, Kyungsoo starts to fear. “You need to come clean with Kim Junmyeon. You still have feelings for him, right?”

Kyungsoo winces, Baekhyun’s words piercing through him. Why does he need to be so blunt? And it’s worse when he plays back the moment he saw Kim Junmyeon on Friday – the cold fingers, the sweaty palms, the quick heartbeat and the sensation that his blood pressure had just brutally gone up and then down within three seconds.

“I guess so,” he admits begrudgingly.

“And you’re single! There, something good came out from being dumped by that other guy!” Baekhyun points out, starting to grin. “You – don’t do anything. I have a plan, so wait for my directions.”

Kyungsoo grimaces. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

“Trust me.”

Kyungsoo doesn’t, but he has no choice, as Baekhyun walks out from his cubicle almost immediately.

He does come back though. “Leave this Friday night free!”

 

 

When he gets home that night, Kyungsoo is exhausted, a ghost of himself. After the embarrassing, worrisome, a bit humiliating even talk with Baekhyun, he had to sort a bunch of data on a study about the efficacy of slide presentation in educational scenarios, and not only the study itself was poorly done, part of the reports had been done by Junmyeon – the author’s (most often than not, offender’s) name came in tiny letters under the title – and of course his reports were much cleaner, more well-done than the others. Of course. 

So, when Kyungsoo arrives home and Henry Lau is in his living room, playing the violin in harmony with Chanyeol’s ukulele as both of them perform a clumsy rendition of Somewhere Over The Rainbow, he’s just too tired he can’t even begin to think of a reaction.

He just stands there, staring with a slight frown, waiting to be noticed. Thankfully, that doesn’t take long.

“Do Kyungsoo!” Henry interrupts the recital to greet, opening his arms wide. “You’re home! Good day at work, right?” While Henry looks jubilant to see Kyungsoo, Chanyeol looks startled – scared, even. His shoulders are hunching, and he seems to be sinking into the couch. God, Chanyeol is such a puppy.

“Awful day at work,” Kyungsoo confesses. Luckily, Henry will presume it’s about the reports. Well, it _is_ about the reports, in a way… “What are you doing here?”

“I met this lad right here,” Henry points at Chanyeol, who’s still shrinking, with the bow of his violin. “Last Friday, when I dropped you off. I spent the weekend wondering if I had seen things, and came here today to check. I thought you lived alone!”

“And you decided to drop by with your violin?” Kyungsoo raises a brow.

“Well, not originally – but seriously, didn’t you live alone?” Henry is pressing. Kyungsoo would really rather not answer that question, but he’s out of choices.

“He’s just a friend who’s staying for a while,” Kyungsoo says dismissively, rubbing a tired hand over his tired eyes. He needs dinner, a bath, and then sleep, not musical visits from workmates. “Stop trying to disappear, Chanyeol, I’m not angry.”

Chanyeol expands in a mix of relief and embarrassment. Henry glances back and forth between them, looking slightly lost. “I’m gonna cook dinner…” Kyungsoo announces before thinking twice. Even when tired, he’s an innate good host… “Do any of you want anything specific?”

“No need! I brought pizza. And beer!” Suddenly, Kyungsoo is very thankful for Henry’s visit. “Come here, eat a slice. You look done for.”

Kyungsoo almost replies with ‘I _am_ done for’, but, instead, he just sighs tiredly, letting himself fall to the floor as his hands reach for the pizza. 

“So, Kyungsoo, you know Donghae, right? Remember him? He worked at the company for a while, was my senior even. Was floor manager for a while, but then…” As always, Henry just won’t stop talking. Kyungsoo tunes it off, trusting Chanyeol to keep him entertained, and just eats, letting his thoughts roam free.

My God, he is tired. He’s tired in a way he hasn’t been in a while, and maybe that’s why he didn’t mind Henry’s home invasion as much as he would any other day. Also, deep down, he’s glad to see that Chanyeol is playing the ukulele frequently, even when Kyungsoo is not around; even now, while listening to Henry’s endless chitchat, he strums it absentmindedly, as if physically unable of keeping his hands off it. Kyungsoo bought the instrument for him on the last Sunday morning, as a thank-you gift for helping him when drunk, a congratulation gift for healing his hands properly, and a lowkey apology gift for kissing him. Since then, he hasn’t let it go for a second.

Kyungsoo smiles when he remembers Chanyeol’s reaction when Kyungsoo got home with the instrument in hands. His smile had been so bright… it was as if Chanyeol had combusted from happiness and become a luminous body, irradiating its own light. Chanyeol is marvelously easy to read, and easy to please.

“… Kyungsoo. Do Kyungsoo! Hey!” Kyungsoo is pushed off the memory train by Henry nudging him with his socked toes. “Don’t tell me you weren’t listening! Oh, you’re smiling to yourself,” Henry communicates, a grin appearing on his face. “Thinking about someone?”

“My bed.” Kyungsoo chomps off a huge piece of his slice of pizza. “You were saying?”

“I was saying,” Henry restarts petulantly, “that Chanyeol here got a gig at Donghae’s bar! He’s gonna play some folk with me, we were rehearsing when you got home.”

“How is ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow’ folk?” Kyungsoo frowns, but then he processes the entire information and his eyes widen. “And hey, congratulations! Wow, and you just healed your hands.”

“I’m a bit worried,” Chanyeol says shyly, scratching his nape. “My fingers are still a bit stiff and all. But Henry-sshi recorded me playing and sent it to the bar owner, and he said it sounds fine.”

“You just have to warm up before playing.” Henry gesticulates with a beer can in hands, violin resting on the couch for now. Kyungsoo didn’t even know Henry played the violin… “Also, if you fuck up, so what? It’s a small bar, no one will mind.”

“Yeah…” Chanyeol shrugs, averting his eyes as his fingers play with the strings of his ukulele. Kyungsoo is oddly endeared by that, but, by now, he’s used to this feeling. Chanyeol himself is an oddly endearing human being. “So… uh, what you think?”

It takes a couple of seconds for Kyungsoo to notice the question was directed to him. Ah. Chanyeol is asking for permission. After all, he’s a pet, right?

“Go for it. This is a good opportunity. You’ve always been a musician, right?” He says without a second thought, keeping his voice nonchalant, but, deep down, genuinely happy for Chanyeol. 

“Right.” There he goes, smiling from ear to ear. “You’re right. I’ll do it.”

“Hooray!” Henry raises his beer in a one-man celebration. “You’ll be there, right?” He nudges Kyungsoo with his foot again. It’s getting annoying. “You can’t miss your pal’s re-debut. Y’all are living together and all so you must be close! Right? It’d be cruel to just—”

“I’ll go!” Kyungsoo shoves Henry’s foot awayn a bit brutally. “I’ll go. I promise.”

“Really?” Chanyeol looks like a child who just heard Christmas is coming earlier. Or, rather, that all days will be Christmas this year. 

“Really.” It’s hard to say no to that face. “When will it be?”

“Friday night! Just after work, perfect timing,” Henry communicates. “I’ll give you the address later. Gotta hear it from Donghae if it’s in the second or third street, because apparently when he bought the place…”

Kyungsoo tunes him off again, and grabs more pizza.

 

 

It’s only when Kyungsoo is lying in bed, fed and clean and ready to be embraced by Morpheus, that he remembers what’s wrong with that date.

“Oh,” he mutters, jolted awake by a cold feeling of terror.

 

Friday come too quickly. Yes, that’s what happens; it comes quicker than it should have, and Kyungsoo, between work and cooking and occasionally cleaning his house and reorganizing his wardrobe for the first time in a year, just didn’t have enough time to solve the Friday Night Problem.

As if to mock him, during the week, both Baekhyun and Henry show up uninvited at his cubicle to tell him details about his simultaneous appointments, and…

“Molto Buono, eight PM sharp,” Baekhyun communicates him unceremoniously on Wednesday. “Dress up.”

“So, it turns out the bar is in the fourth street, not the second,” Henry tells him during lunch on Thursday, somehow having found Kyungsoo in his hiding—uh, resting place. “So it’s like, a five-minute walk from the station. The bar opens at seven, but we’ll probably start playing around eight. Be there or be square!”

Kyungsoo, who almost sighed in relief when he heard the word ‘seven’, had to swallow a grimace. It had a bitter taste.

So yeah, Friday comes too fast, thrice as fast as it usually does. When he wakes up and realizes the day has already come, a knot so big forms in his throat that he can barely eat his breakfast.

“So,” Chanyeol suddenly strikes a conversation during breakfast, mouth full of rice (slightly burnt) and grilled salmon (more-than-slightly burnt). “You going tonight?”

The knot in Kyungsoo’s throat swells. He takes a good look at Chanyeol, and watches how he practically vibrates from giddiness and anticipation.

“Of course.” It’s slightly hard to breathe, even. Then, on impulse, he fakes a malicious grin to half-joke, “why? What if I didn’t go?”

Chanyeol deflates. Kyungsoo winces.

“I’d miss you,” and it’s like Chanyeol just literally stabbed Kyungsoo in the chest. He, himself, seems a bit embarrassed for saying it, because he looks down, face reddening steadily. “Of course, I want you to be there. If it weren’t for you, I’d probably have lost my hands and would never play again. And—and it’s against the rules,” he adds. “One of the rules is that I have to be home when you’re home, right?”

Kyungsoo sighs. “Yeah.”

“So, if you come home from work and I’m not here, I’ll be violating the rules,” he finishes off matter-of-factly. However, the look on Kyungsoo’s face must be really terrible, because, once Chanyeol glances at him, he immediately says, “it’s okay if you can’t go, though. Or don’t want to. I mean, I’m not that good and haven’t rehearsed much—”

“Don’t be silly,” Kyungsoo forces out a chuckle, pureeing his salmon with his chopsticks. “I’ll go.” 

 

 

“I can’t go.”

“Because?” Baekhyun demands immediately.

“Because,” Kyungsoo starts, but has nothing to follow with, so he just says, “because.”

“Stop being a coward, this is not you.” Baekhyun has his hands on his hips, having, somehow, assumed the role of Kyungsoo’s mother. “Are you gonna hide from him forever? We don’t know how long he’ll work here for.”

“One, I’m not hiding from him,” he protests. “Two… uh, I have another appointment.”

Baekhyun raises his brows completely unconvinced. “Which would be…?”

“It’s… well…” Kyungsoo hesitates. He needs to be careful when telling Baekhyun about Chanyeol-related things. Henry Lau might already know that Chanyeol lives with him, but Henry Lau isn’t nosy _or_ a tattler _or_ constantly prying into his personal life. “A friend of mine, the friend from the calls? He got a really important thing today, he’s an artist and all, and he invited me—”

“Cancel it,” Baekhyun shrugs. Kyungsoo just stares. “I’m not for ditching friends at important times, but really, dude, you’ve been pining over this guy for ten years!” He reaches over the cubicle walls to shake Kyungsoo’s shoulders. “Ten years, Kyungsoo! You need to set this story straight!”

“Okay! Okay, I got it!” With some difficulty, Kyungsoo frees himself from Baekhyuns grip. He sometimes wonders how many trashcans Baekhyun piles up to be able to loom over Kyungsoo’s cubicle like the omen of bad luck he is. “I’ll… cancel it with my friend.”

“Excellent!” Baekhyun beams. He’s the Devil. “I’ll take you there tonight. Nice cologne, by the way!”

Kyungsoo feels overwhelmingly unhappy. “Thanks.”

 

 

And just as fast as Friday came, the hours fly by Kyungsoo without a warning. There’s not enough time for him to think of a solution to his problem, but, somehow, there’s still time for a heavy feeling of dread to settle down in his stomach. This is really not like him. He’s usually cool, collected, reasonable… this situation is shaking him more than he’d otherwise allow it to.

“Ready to go?” Kyungsoo almost jumps when he hears Baekhyun’s voice. He glances at Baekhyun – who’s staring fixedly at him with a expectant smile – and then at his computer’s clock. Shit.

“I… sure,” he lies, quickly putting his baby (the computer) to sleep as he grabs his suit jacket. When he stands up and walks to the hallway, Baekhyun, who’s waiting there, makes a face.

“We’ll fix you up on the way there,” he says, more to himself than to Kyungsoo, and starts walking. “Let’s go.”

The subway line they take to go to the restaurant is, believe it or not, the same Kyungsoo would take to go to Lee Donghae’s bar, but in the opposite direction. It’s just another reminder, an unnecessary one, honestly, that he’s ditching Chanyeol on an important night. That he’s letting him down.

But wait a minute, he thinks. Letting Chanyeol down? He owes nothing to Chanyeol. In fact, Chanyeol owes him – he’s been letting him stay at his home and eat his food for almost three months already, free of charge. Why is he minding so much that he’ll disappoint Chanyeol? When did he start thinking this high about him?

It’s fairly clear that Kyungsoo is one of a kind heart, but this? This seems a little excessive. He shouldn’t be this fussed.

“You’re quiet,” Baekhyun comments, snapping Kyungsoo out of his thoughts. “Nervous?”

Kyungsoo scoffs. “Nah. Just… thinking.”

“Don’t think too much,” says Baekhyun, patting Kyungsoo’s shoulder in what should be a comforting way. “You’ll patch things up with him soon. You two will be the perfect couple and everyone at the company will be super jealous, I assure you.”

A sigh gets stuck in Kyungsoo’s throat, his heart losing its rhythm very slightly. Dating Kim Junmyeon once again… how many times did he think about it? For how long did he dream of what-ifs, of if-onlys, reliving their time together in his mind? Rather than being an ex, Junmyeon is a trauma. A trauma he’s about to look on the eyes for the first time in so, so long.

Kyungsoo sweats.

He’s not ready when they arrive at the restaurant, but he holds his chin high. Even if he crumbles from nervousness, he still has his pride, and, if he is to fall, he will fall with grace.

“I’ll let you take it from here,” Baekhyun is fixing him up at the entrance of the restaurant, straightening his tie, combing his hair, applying more cologne… “He’s in already, you just need to find him and do your thing. You okay? You look pale.”

“You’re seeing things.”

“Okay. But don’t faint,” comes the warning as Baekhyun checks up on his appearance from head to toe, back to front. “You’re good to go. Good luck!”

“Thanks,” Kyungsoo says emotionlessly, taking a deep breath, straightening his spine, and walking into the restaurant without second thoughts.

Said second thoughts come when he spots Junmyeon inside, sitting alone at a table, in his pristine suit and with his black hair combed in an elegant style. Kyungsoo’s legs almost make him turn around and run, but he manages to control them and walk forward fearlessly.

“Kyungsoo!” Junmyeon’s face lights up when he sees Kyungsoo, and he immediately gets to his feet to greet him. Kyungsoo feels like he’s trying to swallow a whole apple, from the way he’s choking up, even though their handshake is strictly professional. “Good to see you again! You left early last Friday.”

“Ah, yes, I… I had promised to Baekhyun I’d grab soju with him,” Kyungsoo lies a bit clumsily, but it’s good enough. “Wait, you know Baekhyun, right?”

“I do! We met during the week. He’s supposed to come later, right?” Junmyeon glances around, searching around to see if Baekhyun has already arrived, and Kyungsoo is impressed at how uncreative his ‘friend’ is. 

“I hope he doesn’t come,” Kyungsoo says with some spite, and, unfortunately, he only realizes what he has said when he sees surprise in Junmyeon’s face. “Because—because he’s very annoying! Yeah, I can’t stand him.”

“But… you just said that you went out with him on Friday…”

The choking feeling is worsening by the second. “Yeah. We’re friends, I guess. I don’t understand how I got roped up with him.” He sighs, avoiding, at all costs, looking at Junmyeon, so to give a chance to the blush in his face to disappear. 

Junmyeoon chuckles. “You’re still like this, I see,” he says, and the blush worsens too, god _damn_ it. “You always pretend you don’t care for the people you care the most.”

“That’s not true!” Kyungsoo thinks of his interpersonal relations up so far. He thinks of his boyfriends – who he always cared for, in all possible ways – Byun Baekhyun – who he legitimately can’t stand and _doesn’t_ care for – and Chanyeol – who…

Kyungsoo frowns. What about Chanyeol? He’s pretty good to him. He calls everyday, gave him medicine, even bought a ukulele for him, and God knows musical instruments are expensive. But feelings-wise, does he care for Chanyeol? Is he an important person to him?

He glances discreetly at Junmyeon, who’s trying to attract a waiter’s attention. Back then when they were dating, Kyungsoo would bend backwards to please him. Junmyeon wasn’t a demanding boyfriend or particular hard to care for, but Kyungsoo would always go the extra mile, even getting in trouble with his parents for sneaking out of bed to go on a late night date with him. 

As for Chanyeol… he hardly demands anything. No, he _never_ demands anything. He accepts all the kindness Kyungsoo offers him, even half-hearted ones, like giving him a futon to sleep or buying him a toothbrush, as some kind of blessing, thanking Kyungsoo again and again and again. Is this just Chanyeol being overly humble? Or maybe Kyungsoo is unconsciously being too good to him to? 

No, he adds bitterly to his own thoughts, that can’t be. After all, he _is_ refusing to give Chanyeol the only thing he had ever asked him for – his presence tonight, at the bar. And he’d never had done this to Junmyeon back then…

Wait, why is he comparing Junmyeon and Chanyeol?

“Kyungsoo?” Junmyeon calls, and Kyungsoo comes back from his reflections. “Uh, do you want to eat anything…?”

Kyungsoo blinks. The menu lies in front of him. “Oh, right,” he grabs and opens it a bit distractedly. “Right, sorry.”

“Were you spacing out?” Junmyeon grins. “Thinking about someone?”

The jokes hit him way harder than when Henry made it. “Oh, please,” he scoffs, face burning. “No, I’m not.”

“Mm.” Junmyeon drinks a sip of water. “I see.”

Kyungsoo’s nape is start to feel cold. Why did Junmyeon say that? _I see_? Was that a _good to know_ of some sorts? The menu items dance in front of his eyes. Should he order anything? He’s hungry, and, by the looks of it, it’ll be a long time before he has the courage to actually come clean with Junmyeon. What is he gonna say even? Maybe if he says it now he’ll still make it to Chanyeol’s gig…

Wait a minute. Why is he thinking about Chanyeol again? Also, how does he expect to have time to go to the bar if things go well with Junmyeon?

Isn’t that what he’s hoping for? That things go well with Junmyeon?

He glances up again, this time to find the other man toying with a napkin. If you’re trying to patch things up with an ex, it’s natural to intend to spend the night with them, right? It’s the good end for the situation: you say what you want to say, the ex accepts your feelings, and you have a wonderful date with them and maybe have a good night of sex to wrap everything up.

Instead, Kyungsoo is sitting there thinking about his stupid ukulele-playing pet, as if he were more important than _this_.

And that’s what makes him realize.

“Look,” he says suddenly, laying the menu back down on the table without reading a single word of it. It makes Junmyeon look up, perhaps a little startled. “It’s been a really long time, and I wish I could just sit here and have a nice chat about the weather or something, but… I really need to talk to you.”

Junmyeon blinks. He’s visibly confused, and clueless. “About what…?”

“About things.” Kyungsoo is, at last, firm from the bottom of his heart. “About us.”

 

 

He barely makes it to the gig. When he gets to the bar, clumsily juggling his suit jacket and subway pass in his hands, the first chorus of Don’t Pass Me By is being heartily performed by the unlikely duo that is Henry and Chanyeol.

Well, that’s more folk-ish than Somewhere Over The Rainbow, that’s for sure. Kyungsoo enters the bar leisurely, breathing hard from the dash he made from the station to there, as he takes a seat near the counter to order a nice, cold beer.

When he gives the stage a second glance, watching them play from that angle, Chanyeol suddenly looks up – and their eyes meet immediately, like magnets.

The smile that breaks in Chanyeol’s face is a restrained one, since he’s onstage, but it’s the most radiant one Kyungsoo has ever seen.

 

 

After they finish playing, they grab a couple of beers together. Lee Donghae recognizes Kyungsoo from the company, and asks about his boyfriends (the last one he remembers was something like two guys ago). Henry drinks himself to sleep, which in reality doesn’t involve much alcohol; apparently he spent the entire day running from the fifth to the second floor because of a mistake someone made in the raw data of the slideshow study (Kyungsoo _knew_ something was wrong). 

And Chanyeol… Chanyeol talks a lot. Eats a lot, drinks a little, and is in a great mood for the entire night, even when Henry teases him, a bit cruelly, for missing the tempo during Billie Jean. How is Billie Jean ‘folk’? Kyungsoo doesn’t know. All he knows is that Chanyeol is doing it again – acting like Kyungsoo coming tonight, a small courtesy that barely means anything, is the best thing that ever happened to him.

In the walk back home, after the bar closes and they leave Henry for Donghae to deal with, Kyungsoo tells Chanyeol everything. He tells Chanyeol about Junmyeon, about the heartbreak he’s suffered and the reason why he drank so much last Friday; about how, finally, tonight, he finally called Junmyeon out for the dickish way he broke up with him – “’I’m graduating so we can’t be together as often anymore’. He wasn’t even leaving town, he was just going to college, so what, we can’t text each other? Have dates in the weekends? Give me a break.”

“That’s awful,” Chanyeol said in response to that, making a displeased face.

“Right? Jackass.” Kyungsoo gets angry every time he remembers that. “So I told him that, to his face. And also…”

And also, Kyungsoo made it very clear that all he feels for Junmyeon nowadays, the lingering feeling that has plagued him for years, is hurt. Kyungsoo is still deeply upset at him, but there’s no feeling of love, or even attraction, anymore.

That’s where he finishes his rant.

“And then?” Chanyeol asks, immersed in the story.

“And then I left him there. And rushed to the bar.” Kyungsoo shrugs. Now that the Junmyeon-gate has been solved, he’s back to being the calm, cool and reserved person he truly is. “Since you asked me to come, I did. Not to mention, it _would_ be against the rules if I went home and you weren’t there.”

Silence. The cold night breeze brushes past them, and Kyungsoo shivers a tad, but he’s okay. Tonight has been a good night, despite everything. He feels like he took a huge weight off his chest, and, for just this moment, he has no worries in the world.

When he glances up at Chanyeol, however, he’s surprised to see a tormented expression in his face. His eyes are on the ground, unfocused, and he’s chewing his lips hard enough to hurt, from Kyungsoo’s point of view.

“Is something bothering you?” He asks, and it seems to catch Chanyeol by surprise. He turns to look at Kyungsoo with his lip still locked between his teeth. “You look troubled.”

“Ah, it’s just…” His voice, usually so loud, is soft, low. “I was just. Thinking.”

Captain Obvious. “About…?” Kyungsoo presses.

“About…” Chanyeol flails his hands, in search for the right words. “You know… if… uh, when you get a boyfriend… what should I do?”

Now it’s Kyungsoo who’s caught by surprise. He blinks. “Huh?”

“Because, you know… wouldn’t it be weird if I still live with you when you get a boyfriend? He might not understand and things can get ugly.” Chanyeol makes a face. “But… I don’t have money, or anywhere else to go. I mean, I could go back to living in the streets…”

Kyungsoo’s eyebrows curve sadly against his will. Chanyeol’s worries are valid, and Kyungsoo himself had never thought of that scenario, but…

“Don’t fret about this now. I have no intentions to get a boyfriend anytime soon.” He says sincerely, adding a scoff at the end of the sentence. “I don’t even have someone I like nowadays. Who would I date, even?”

Chanyeol grins, nudging Kyungsoo’s shoulder playfully. “Me?”

Kyungsoo scoffs again, this time with more disdain. “In your dreams.”

And yet, despite himself, he smiles, and nothing can erase that smile from his face for the rest of his night.

 

 

 

There was a fatal flaw in Kyungsoo’s course of actions on Friday. One that he noticed at the time, but wasn’t ready to deal with. Probably still isn’t.

On that Saturday morning, at exactly five past ten AM, the fatal flaw calls.

“You.” Is how it says hello.

Kyungsoo winces. “Look—”

“ _Look_ ,” Baekhyun sounds terrifying. His voice is already naturally loud, and, at the moment, it sounds like it’s amplified to its limit. “I went through the trouble – a whole lot of trouble, believe me – to set you two up. I made a fucking reservation, I combed your hair, I made up a backstory to get him to go. And then, when the time came, what did you do? YOU RUINED EVERYTHING!”

Kyungsoo has to hold the phone away from his face for a moment. Jesus Christ. “What can I do? I don’t like him anymore. I said everything I had to say to him, then and there.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before?! It’d have saved a whole lot of time! Not to mention the shit I had to get through!”

“Well, I—I wasn’t sure! Give me a break, Baekhyun, I never said that I wanted him back, you just assumed it!”

Chanyeol is sneaking a peek at him from the living room. He pays him no mind.

“I was trying to help! You freaked the fuck out when you saw him at the bar last time, of course I made some assumptions!”

“You’re so nosy, I swear,” Kyungsoo rubs his temples. He wonders if he should just apologize; after all, Baekhyun _did_ go through a whole lot of trouble trying to help Kyungsoo, and it _did_ help him actually, just… not in the way he expected.

“And speaking of nosy!” Baekhyun’s voice peaks. “Who’s Chanyeol? Yesterday, when you were spewing profanity at Kim Junmyeon, you mentioned a Chanyeol, several times even. Is that your _friend_?”

Kyungsoo really doesn’t like the way Baekhyun says ‘friend’. He also doesn’t like Baekhyun’s interest in Chanyeol.

“Yes, that’s him, he’s just a friend who’s living with me for a while,” he recites his rehearsed explanation – and belatedly notices he made a terrible, terrible mistake.

“He’s _living with you_?!”

“Uh. Yes,” Kyungsoo falters. “For a while.”

Silence. Oh, this is not good. This is really not good. Ungood, even.

“This is so fishy, Kyungsoo. You call this guy every day,” Kyungsoo can practically see him counting with his fingers as he speaks. “You ditched your Ultimate Ex for him. And he’s living with you.”

“Yes.”

“And he’s just a friend.”

“Yes.” Kyungsoo clicks his tongue. “Stop prying into my life. What’s that to you?”

“Oh, nothing,” Baekhyun says in obviously fake nonchalance. “I was just thinking. I’m free today, you know? And I’m super bored. Wanna hang out?”

Kyungsoo closes his eyes. There it is. He knew this was going to happen, and he knows that there’s no way out; even if he refuses, Baekhyun will definitely show up at his house, and it will be Hell. “Sure.” He sighs. “Why not.”

“Good. Let’s grab some coffee at Pippa.” A pause. “You can take Chanyeol with you, if you want. I don’t mind.”

He doesn’t even wait for Kyungsoo’s confirmation before angrily hanging up. No matter whether it’s possible to hang up a phone call with anger or not, Byun Baekhyun just did it. 

Chanyeol is still peeking at him from the living room. Kyungsoo sighs again, mentally preparing himself.

“Chanyeol.” The ‘pet’ startles. “Dress up. We’re going out.”

The news seem to excite Chanyeol. He perks up, eyes bright. “Really?”

“Yeah. We’re gonna get some coffee with a workmate of mine.” He suppresses a third sigh. “Dress well, and, if he asks, you’re a friend who’s living with me for a short while. I don’t know the reason. Make something up.”

“Yessir.”

“And just…” The hird sigh escapes from his lips. He’s been having a lot of reasons to be tired these days. “Just, behave.”

“Yessir!”

 

 

Coffee at Pippa goes… better than expected, and, at the same time, worse than expected.

Better because Chanyeol behaves, lies seamlessly, and clicks with Baekhyun immediately.

Worse because… Chanyeol and Baekhyun get along a little too well.

“… and like, I already told her a billion of times the difference, but I think she’s pretending not to get it,” Baekhyun is telling some office gossip, a particular tale that Kyungsoo is already fairly familiar with. He’s not telling it to Kyungsoo though. He’s telling it to Chanyeol, who’s mysteriously immersed in it. “And it eventually reached the director, but thankfully I didn’t get into trouble. I guess he was in a good mood that day. Shame for her.”

“Too bad. Maybe next time,” Chanyeol jokes.

“Maybe.” A pause, during which Baekhyun takes a sip of his latte-macchiato-whatever-else. “Ah, by the way, do you have a job?”

“Me?” No, me, Kyungsoo thinks a bit bitterly. “I’m a musician.”

“Aah.” For the first time in the last ten or fifteen minutes, Baekhyun turns to Kyungsoo. “So he’s your artist friend.”

“The one and only.”

“What do you play?” Immediately back to Chanyeol.

“Well, I originally played drums for the school band, but then I picked up the guitar…”

Kyungsoo easily lets go of the conversation, gazing through the window absentmindedly. He surely didn’t expect that… friendship, if you can call it that, to happen so fast. Or happen at all. To him, Baekhyun and Chanyeol were from opposite ends of his life, and opposites in themselves – bossy and pliant, aggressive and passive, wicked and submissive. Work and home. How did they get along so well?

Work and home. Work and home… That is one strange line of thought, and it makes him feel a strange set of feelings. It’s terribly uncomfortable.

He sits there in a silence of his own, spiritually away from the conversation, trying to sort out what’s bothering him so much. Like a doctor talking to a patient, he asks himself questions. What triggers the unknown feeling? What does it feel like? What could be the cause?

One glance at Chanyeol, who’s talking to a man he met all but twenty minutes ago as if they had been childhood friends, and one answer comes. That. That’s what’s bothering him. Whatever it is – Chanyeol, Chanyeol talking to someone else, Chanyeol making friends too fast – it’s bothering him to no end. 

A horrible guess hovers over him like a raincloud.

“But I really want to ask you one thing, Chanyeol, tell me,” Baekhyun shoots Kyungsoo a sideways glance, and it’s like he _knows_. “How is he at home? Is he cranky? Does he nag a lot?”

“Who, Kyungsoo?” Chanyeol looks startled by the suggestion. “He never nags! He’s…” A small, tender smile blooms on Chanyeol’s lips, which he bites down, trying to contain it. “He’s a really kind person.”

The raincloud starts to pour over Kyungsoo’s head. 

“Whaaaaat?” Baekhyun is genuinely surprised. “Don’t hide anything, Park Chanyeol! You’re telling me he’s not like, you know, always telling you to do stuff and picking on you?”

“No, of course not,” Chanyeol scoffs. “Kyungsoo does everything by himself. I feel useless sometimes, actually, I wish I could help more.”

Kyungsoo’s chest tightens. “Good to know. I’ll trust you with the cleaning from now on,” Kyungsoo states, putting up a front. “You’ll never feel useless again.”

“Ah, here it is,” Baekhyun accuses.

“Yessir!” Chanyeol replies as usual, even though they’re in public, and ah, if Kyungsoo’s chest tightens any more, his ribs will break.

Baekhyun glances back and forth between them, eyes narrow. “He probably has some weird hobby then,” he declares. “Doesn’t he, Chanyeol?”

At that question, Chanyeol falters for an entire second, during which his face turns a fascinating shade of crimson. “Uh… he… has an online shopping problem.”

Kyungsoo accidentally snorts coffee through his nose.

“Hmm,” Baekhyun hums, apparently not very interested in that answer. Now, he seems more interesting in studying Chanyeol’s blush, staring at him cryptically. “By the way, do you have any hobbies, Chanyeol?”

“Ah, I really like puzzles…”

 

 

It’s comprehensible that, once the sun has set and they decide to leave the coffee shop, Kyungsoo wants to go home.

One, because he’s tired from hearing Baekhyun and Chanyeol talk nonstop for hours.

Two, because he just found out that, somehow, somewhere in time, he has fallen for Chanyeol, and he needs to digest that feeling in the solitude of his room.

He has fallen for Chanyeol.

He, Kyungsoo. For Park Chanyeol.

Fucking nonsense.

“Huh? You don’t want to go?” Both Baekhyun and Chanyeol look surprised at his decision. When leaving the coffee shop, Baekhyun suggested changing locations to a bar, so they can get some beers and talk more. Kyungsoo politely refused.

“I have a terrible headache,” he lies. “Maybe some other day…”

“Alright…” Chanyeol is visibly unsure of what to do. He inches closer to Kyungsoo. “Uh… then…”

“You don’t need to go with me,” Kyungsoo clarifies. “Ring the doorbell when you get home. I don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep.”

Understandably, Chanyeol is surprised. He blinks, at a loss for a second. “But…” He casts Baekhyun a quick glance, so quick that it’s invisible. “Are you sure it’s okay?”

“Yeah.” Kyungsoo gives him a Look, full of Meaning. He knows what Chanyeol is unsure about; the rule, the one that says he needs to be around Kyungsoo at all times. What was Kyungsoo thinking when he made those rules up? “Go. Have a blast.”

Still, Chanyeol hesitates. And hesitates… and then, finally, he smiles. “Thank you.” It stings. 

“Stay safe, though.”

“Yessir.”

“You owe me a beer,” Baekhyun accuses, breaking the moment. “Or a couple of beers, actually, for the shit you pulled on me yesterday. I’ll let you live today.”

Kyungsoo rolls his eyes. “So merciful.”

“So I am.” 

He then entwines his arm with Chanyeol’s, and Kyungsoo feels something crawl under his skin. “Have a great time being a loner.”

“Have a great time talking your mouth off,” Kyungsoo spites back, walking away before he changes his mind. He’s recently, very recently – just some hours ago – realized that he’d love either to go back in time and prevent Chanyeol and Baekhyun from ever meeting, or to stand like a wall between them, making it impossible for them to communicate. Seeing them get so well along is… tough. For mildly mysterious reasons.

The ride back home is full of questions that he doesn’t bother answering. How did this happen?, is one of them. What do I do?, is another. He just can’t think deeply about them for now, since the information itself – that he’s sort of crushing on Chanyeol or something, maybe, hypothetically – is still sinking in.

Oh God, he has fallen for Chanyeol.

 _How_?

It sounds ridiculous to his own ears, but, when he tries to prove otherwise – when he tries to affirm that no, Chanyeol’s smiles don’t make him giddy, and _no_ , he wouldn’t be sad if Chanyeol went away one day – he just ends up getting more and more proof that he’s, indeed, infatuated. It’s horrible. It’s sweet, and he has to force his face into remaining straight, and it’s so, so horrible.

When he gets home, back resting against the front door and eyes closed, he almost screams. God, this is too much. 

He needs a distraction. He can’t spend the entire day thinking about Chanyeol. It’d be madness, specially now that he thinks back and realizes that _he has done that before_. Ah, ridiculous. He needs the biggest distraction he can find.

An idea dawns upon him.

And that’s how he ends up on his bed, naked, bedroom door and curtains shut, a lubed finger teasing his entrance. In front of him, lies one of his dildos – a medium-sized one, since it’s been a while, but one of the dragon ones, to keep it interesting. He hasn’t had quality time with himself for a while now, since his last break-up, because Chanyeol was always around…

Shit. He needs to steer his thoughts away from Chanyeol, lest he starts imagining how he’d be in bed. That’d be going way too fast, hasn’t he just discovered his feelings? He shouldn’t think about a crush’s dick length barely hours after finding out you have a crush at all, right? Even though you live with said crush, and said crush has worn cotton shorts before – one of Kyungsoo’s own, way too short for Chanyeol’s long, long legs – and there was something to be seen there…

Kyungsoo keens in annoyance when his cock twitches. Traitor.

He takes it slow, enjoying each moment, each sensation, feeling his muscles relax as he leisurely pleases himself. First it’s one finger, hardly any stretching for him, but a gentle caress, a promise of more to come. Then, he adds one more…

His cellphone rings.

He groans, fingers halting still inside of him, the initial warmth of pleasure waning. This better be good.

There’s some tissues by his bedside, which he uses to clean his fingers before picking up. On the caller ID, an unknown number, but he knows who it is, because he got a call of that same number earlier today.

“What is it?” He answers in bad spirits.

“ _You need to help this guy_ ,” Baekhyun hisses, hardly affected by the greeting. “ _He’s completely whipped for you. It’s sickening._ ”

“Hm?” Kyungsoo frowns. “Who? Chanyeol?”

“ _Yes? Don’t tell me you have never noticed. He couldn’t be more obvious if he wore a LED panel saying ‘I heart Do Kyungsoo’. You’ve noticed, right?_ ”

Kyungsoo grins, wider and wider by the second and he just can’t stop grinning. “I have,” he says, because really, he has. He has known all along. Chanyeol really is an obvious one. “What about it?”

“ _Well, he’s just talked to me about you for hours. Literal hours. I just… feel so sorry for him_ ,” Baekhyun sighs. “ _Do him, Kyungsoo. Take one for the team._ ”

Kyungsoo snorts. “You want me to date him out of pity?”

“ _He’s a charity case._ ”

“Well… have you considered that, maybe,” Kyungsoo starts cleaning himself and putting his clothes back on. Talking to Baekhyun is the most efficient of the boner-killers he knows. “Maybe he wouldn’t want that?”

“ _By the looks of it, he’d just be glad to date you, out of pity or out of anything else_ ,” Baekhyun does the voice equivalent of an eye roll. “ _Well, anyway, he must be ringing your doorbell already. Set it straight with him yourself._ ”

Kyungsoo, who’s washing his hands, frowns. “You’ve sent him off already?”

“ _Uh, yes? I left him on your street, like, ten minutes ago._ ” A pause. “ _Did he get lost?_ ”

“I’ll go check. Maybe—” He doesn’t finish that sentence because he opens his bedroom door. And, when he opens his bedroom door, he almost collides with something. Most specifically, he almost collides with a Chanyeol, who gasps loudly, almost falling on his ass in his startle. 

“Shit.”

“ _Kyungsoo?_ ” Baekhyun’s voice echoes in Kyungsoo’s ears dully, like distant white noise. For a moment – seconds? Minutes? Hours? – he stares right into Chanyeol’s eyes without saying a word. Chanyeol does the same, but he says a lot through his eyes, his facial expression. Fear, nervousness. Alarm, from being caught with his hand in the cookie jar. 

Kyungsoo hangs up without another word.

Silence.

It takes Chanyeol great effort to talk. His mouth quivers. “For the record,” is what he says, “I wouldn’t want you to date me out of pity.”

So he has been listening. So he knows what it’s been about. Sharp boy.

“I presumed so.”

“Rather than that,” he adds, cheeks reddening steadily, and Kyungsoo marvels, for a moment, on how easily Chanyeol blushes. “Rather than that, I’d prefer to stay as your pet.”

At that, Kyungsoo raises his brows in surprise. “Really?” A pause. “Why?”

“Because… that way I can sort of date you, but you’re not forced to date me,” he explains, and it’s admirable that he hasn’t averted his eyes. “You understand, right? I get to be around you, and hear you talking about your day, and eat your food, and someday—someday I really want to cook for you, I used to make really good pasta.”

“Oh. I’m looking forward to it.”

“Yeah. And, you really don’t have to do anything. Just stay by my side.”

Kyungsoo’s heart contorts around itself. It’s like there’s a hand around it, squeezing it like a lemon, squeezing, squeezing… and yet, somehow, he keeps his cool, because that’s who he is. Calm. Cool. Collected. Reasonable.

“Don’t you want to kiss me sometimes, though?” He teases. “Touch me? How would you cope?”

“About that… I’ll just to hold it back,” he replies immediately, and it throws Kyungsoo off how unfazed Chanyeol is about his question. “If you don’t want to do it, I won’t do it.”

That’s ridiculous. Chanyeol really has no backbone at all. Ridiculous, ridiculous.

“You’re ridiculous,” Kyungsoo blurts out, stepping forward to finally grab that ridiculous face, and kiss those ridiculous lips.

When their lips touch, Kyungsoo feels a strong sensation of déjà vu. Ah, yes, he has experienced this before, right? This warmth. This taste of sunshine. The kiss, this time, is much more gentle than the thirsty pashing from two week ago – damn, has it really been just two week ago? – and that makes it much better, much smoother, and much harder to let go of.

He has to, eventually. He needs to explain himself.

“What if I want to, then?” He asks defiantly, but softly, eyes piercing right through Chanyeol’s own. “What you’ll do?”

Chanyeol licks his lips, eyes dazed. In an unexpectedly bold move, he leans forward, kissing Kyungsoo once again, quickly, but tenderly. “It’s my duty to do whatever you want me to do,” he answers, and oh, his voice is so low, so nice…

“Don’t force yourself though,” Kyungsoo warns, pushing now that he’s pulled. “If you don’t feel like it—”

Kyungsoo doesn’t finish that sentence. Chanyeol slams him against the opposite wall, cornering, looming over him, full of intent.

“I want you,” he confesses almost pleadingly, almost begging for Kyungsoo to just _understand_. “I’ve wanted you since… I don’t know. Since I had that fever and you carried me to the hospital…?”

Kyungsoo raises his brows. “Wow, it’s been a while since then.”

“Yeah,” Chanyeol agrees somewhat mournfully. Poor thing. And he has been pining secretly for all this time? He bites his lip thoughtfully, and it’s so weird, because he doesn’t bite it in an attractive way – he always chomps on it like a child – but it’s so _endearing_. “You want me too, right?”

Kyungsoo thinks. He thinks, and lets the silence stretch, just a little bit. “Maybe,” he confesses, rolling his eyes for added effect. “We’ll see.”

Chanyeol sighs in relief, and smiles, so wide and so brightly that it blinds Kyungsoo for a moment. It’s a half-assed confession, Kyungsoo has to admit to himself, but hey; if Chanyeol is happy, it’s all okay. If Chanyeol is happy, he must’ve done something right – even if he was just being himself. 

For once, being himself will be enough.

 

 

Later, when he, amidst kisses and naughty touches and giggles, takes Chanyeol’s to his bed, Chanyeol yelps when he falls down to the mattress.

“Wait, I fell on something!” He communicates with some alarm, reaching for whatever it is.

It’s the dragon dildo.

Heavy silence falls upon them. Chanyeol’s eyes travel from the dildo to Kyungsoo with shock, surprise… and curiosity.

Laughing, Kyungsoo grabs the dildo and tosses it aside, pressing Chanyeol against the mattress to kiss him more, touch him more, feel him all over.

Maybe some other time, though…

 

 

 

 

 

“Hey, have you heard? Looks like Kim Junmyeon from the fifth floor likes Byun Baekhyun from the fourth.”

“Ah, yes, I heard he confessed but got rejected.”

“Whaaaaat?”

Oh, that’s new. Kyungsoo frowns to himself, wondering if that’s true. He should ask Baekhyun himself some other day. The man has been oddly quiet and reflexive for the past week, maybe that could be the reason…

“By the way, there’s Kyungsoo oppa…”

There they go.

“I know what you mean. He hasn’t gotten a new boyfriend since that guy from IT, right?”

“That’s what it looks like, but I’ve heard he got a new boyfriend. Not anyone from the company though, someone he met at a bar…”

“Really? I heard they met at a golf match, but I didn’t believe it at the time.”

Kyungsoo almost laughs out loud. 

“I wonder how long this one will last. Not working at the same place, won’t his boyfriend feel lonely?”

“He’s very work-oriented…”

“Men are really demanding, he might get tired of it…”

“Maybe that’s Kyungsoo oppa’s taste…”

The train reaches his stop, and, once again, Kyungsoo makes sure that he’s seen by the gossiping group, walking right past them to climb off. This time around, though, he doesn’t spare them a glance, smiling secretively to himself.

A golf match… seriously, where do people get that crap from? He doesn’t even play golf. He’s pretty sure Chanyeol doesn’t play it either, he’s not a fan of sports. And he’s definitely not patient enough.

Kyungsoo can barely wait to get home.

The days when he’d be met with an empty house when coming back from work seem blurry, distant as they can be. It’s been almost a year already – seven months, to be exact – since he has taken Chanyeol in as a pet, and almost four since he has upgraded him to ‘boyfriend’ level. It’s taken them longer than usual to start guessing… maybe people are losing interest in Kyungsoo’s love life, now that he’s in a steady, healthy, happy relationship.

He likes it perfectly fine this way. He never really liked being in the limelight.

Once he arrives home, he’s greeted by the heavenly smell of carbonara sauce, and by the sight of Chanyeol in an apron, thick-framed glasses balancing on the tip of his nose, hurriedly setting the table for dinner.

“Oh!” He perks up when the door slams closed behind Kyungsoo, the lock clicking in place. With a smile, he hurries towards Kyungsoo to greet him properly. “Welcome ho—”

Kyungsoo pulls him down for a kiss, not wasting a single second. It’s not much of a deep kiss, but it certainly is deeper than usual ‘welcome home’ ones. Once he lets go, Chanyeol is visibly surprised, and slightly dazed.

“Wow.” He grins a bit greasily. “Miss me much?”

“I was just rewarding you!” Kyungsoo protests. “For making dinner! You’re an ungrateful one, I’ll think twice next time.”

“Noooo,” Chanyeol whines, falling for it, rushing to pull Kyungsoo closer once he starts walking away. “Thank you, darling. I really liked it. Can we do it again?”

Kyungsoo raises a brow, glancing at Chanyeol analytically. “I’ll think about it.”

“Yay!” Chanyeol plants a kiss on his cheek. “You’re so good to me. Let’s eat now, then? I tried to make carbonara, but I might’ve burnt the bacon a little bit, or over-fried it, I don’t know, is there such a thing as over-frying? I think that’s just burning…”

He chatters for a while about his food, which he always do, while setting the table, and while eating, sometimes. Kyungsoo doesn’t mind, doesn’t particular like it either, but doesn’t mind. He likes hearing Chanyeol talk, and watching Chanyeol talk. And just, watching Chanyeol do anything… how disgusting. He’s a lovesick fool.

Well, he’s always had a soft spot in his heart for pets. Specially obedient, helpful, cute ones.

“Kyungsoo?” Chanyeol waves a hand in front of his eyes, and Kyungsoo snaps out of it. “Were you listening? Why are you zoning out?”

“Hm…” he pauses thoughtfully. “I wonder if I should get you a collar.”

“What?!”

It’s a thought to consider.


End file.
